Love and Lighter Fluid
by Ashvarden
Summary: They're the two toughest hoods in Tulsa, and they don't love anything or anyone... except maybe each other. TimxDally
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is set a little while before the start of the book, a few months after the Curtis parents have died.

This is my first Outsiders fic, so if my characterization's a little off let me know. Feedback is much appreciated, constructive criticism especially.

Warning: There **will **be mild slash in this fic—nothing explicit, though, and (hopefully) no one will be acting like a lovestruck 12-year-old girl unless s/he actually _is _a lovestruck 12-year-old girl.

* * *

Dallas Winston was not having a good morning.

"OUT! GET OUTTA MY HOUSE!" There was the sound of something shattering as it was thrown at him, hitting the wall less than a foot above Dally's white-blond head. Probably a beer bottle; there were at least a dozen of them all over the floor, and there weren't too many other things in the house that were glass and not already broken. Well, unless you counted the windows, but technically they weren't really _in _the house.

It wouldn't have hit him anyway, but he ducked instinctively, making a run for the door. If he was lucky, he'd be outside before his dad could stumble his way over to the front door, and he could get away without having anything else thrown at him.

No such luck—Dally had barely made it to the doorway when a second, more accurately aimed bottle hit him in the back of the head and shattered, sending chunks and slivers of glass flying everywhere. He stumbled, one hand automatically flying up to clutch at his throbbing head, but he kept going, shoving his way out the door and tripping over the welcome mat. He landed flat on his face, cussing loudly, and pushed himself back up.

His dad, a big, ugly-looking guy that didn't look a thing like him—with the possible exception of the cold, hard look in his eyes—appeared in the doorway but stopped there, swaying drunkenly. He took a long swig from the half-empty beer bottle in his hand, glaring venomously at the retreating form of his son.

"AND DON'T YOU COME BACK, NEITHER, YOU GOOD-FOR-NOTHING LITTLE BASTARD!"

Dally snarled and yelled something that sounded a lot like, "Fuck you!" except with a few more expletives added on, and stormed down the driveway towards the street.

He didn't give a damn about his dad, anyway, he told himself firmly as he walked up the street, away from his father's house. His father's, not his. It wasn't often that Dally went home—a couple of times a month, at the most, usually when he didn't have anywhere else to crash or he needed to get something from his room—but it seemed like every time he did, he ended up getting thrown out again within a day or so. Usually less, because when he got mad he couldn't keep his mouth shut to save his life, and his dad didn't take well to being yelled back at.

That—the complete and total inability to keep his trap shut when someone said something to him—wasn't usually a problem for him, since he loved a good fight and could handle just about anybody, but sometimes—like now—he regretted opening his mouth, no matter how much his dad deserved it. He'd learned a long time ago that talking back to James Winston didn't do anything but earn him a beating, and sometimes worse. He _still _had nightmares about the time his father had locked him in a closet.

It had been three—almost four—days before he'd gotten so sick of listening to Dally begging him to be let out that he'd unlocked the door.

He was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice that someone had stepped out of an alleyway right in front of him until he slammed into something way too soft to be a wall, sending the both of them tumbling to the ground. They landed in a mess of flailing limbs, cussing loudly.

Swearing, Dally started to get up, but froze when he realized whom it was exactly that he'd run into. "Hey, Tim," he said, eyeing the older boy warily.

"Dally," Tim replied from his position flat on his back on the pavement, with Dally lying half on top of him. "What're you up so early for? Usually you're still passed out somewhere, sleepin' off the night before," he said, sounding vaguely amused.

After a long moment, he added, "You mind gettin' offa me?" He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"Nah, I'm kinda comfy here," Dallas muttered sarcastically, before rolling off of the other hood and getting to his feet slowly. He held in the wince when he straightened up, but he could tell that Tim had noticed something was up; he was watching the blond-haired hood with something akin to concern in his eyes. Dally almost laughed out loud at that thought—Tim, concerned? About him? Yeah, right. Tim wasn't concerned about anybody besides himself, with the possible exceptions of Curly and Angela. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that Tim was _concerned _about him, except maybe over the fact that Dally threatened his title as the 'toughest hood in Tulsa'.

He held out his hand and, after a moment, Tim accepted it and let the younger boy pull him to his feet, making absolutely no effort to help out. After all, _Dally_ had run into _him_, not the other way around.

"Whatta 'bout you?"

"Huh?" Tim asked intelligently. He hadn't really been listening, too busy looking Dally over for injuries to keep an ear on the conversation—so far he'd spotted a rapidly developing black eye, a split lip, a scrape above his left eyebrow, and several shadows on his forearms that would be nasty bruises by the next morning. The way that Dallas had been so careful standing up told of some kind of damage to his ribs, too. It was obvious he'd been in a skin fight of some kind.

"Glory, you sure are a bright one, Shepard." Dally rolled his eyes. "Ain't you supposed to be gettin' your beauty sleep or somethin'? You sure look like ya need it." He made a show of examining the older boy's face. "Can't get much uglier then that."

"Well at least my face don't look like my ass," Tim grumbled, taking a half-hearted swing at him. It was more for show than anything; the two of them teased and insulted each other all the time, and 'ugly' wasn't even at the _bottom _of the list of stuff they usually called each other.

Feeling something running down the back of his neck, Dally rubbed the back of his head. He was startled when something wet came away on his hand. Looking down at the blood glistening on his fingers, he swore loudly and started trying to wipe it off on his jeans.

Tim eyed him with a neutral expression on his face. "You OK, Winston?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's nothin'. Just a little cut."

"Sure it is," Shepard snorted. "Lemme have a look at it, blondie." Dallas growled at him; he hated it when Tim—or anyone else, for that matter—called him that.

He grabbed the blond by the arm none-too-gently and turned him around so he could look at the back of his head. When he saw the source of the blood, he could feel his eyes widen. Almost the entire bottom half of Dally's white-blond hair was bright red from blood, and it had soaked into the back of his shirt collar, too. At the rate it was bleeding, the entire back of his shirt would be soaked pretty soon.

He could see small pieces of glass glinting in the boy's hair, too. Little chunks were sticking out of the back of his neck, too, and after a close look at it he identified it as coming from a liquor bottle—he couldn't think of anything else that was that same shade of bottle-green.

Thankfully, it didn't look like it was anything too major. Head wounds tended to bleed a lot.

"Ouch. What the hell happened to ya?" he asked, picking a sliver of glass out of one of the larger wounds.

"Nothin'. Just got in a fight. Who knew gettin' wacked with a beer bottle hurt that much?" he answered flippantly, trying not so sound like he was lying—which, technically, he wasn't. Tim, however, knew him well enough to see right through the act and just stared at him with his best I-can-tell-you're-not-tellin'-me-something-Winston-so-you'd-better-fess-up-or-I'll-bash-your-head-in look on his face, cocking an eyebrow. It was the same one he'd used when Dally had slashed his car tires, and it got about the same reaction as it had before—absolutely nothing.

"C'mon, Dally. What _really _happened?"

"That _is_ what really happened."

"Bullshit. You're not tellin' me somethin'." Tim glared at Dally, waiting for an answer. The two of them stood there for a long moment, Tim staring Dally down in an attempt to get him to talk.

Finally, after an almost painfully long pause, Dally muttered reluctantly, "It was my dad."

"What?" Tim's expression was confused, although he quickly tried to mask it with a neutral expression. He hadn't even known that Dally _had _a father. He'd sure as hell never mentioned him before, and Tim had known him for _years_. It made him wonder what else he didn't know about Dallas…

"Was he drunk?"

"Yeah, thankfully." Tim shot him a confused look. (He seemed to be doing that a lot lately…) "He's even worse when he's sober," Dally explained, shrugging.

"Oh." Tim cleared his throat awkwardly, not really sure what to say to that. Pity flickered momentarily across his face before he masked it quickly behind an indifferent look. Having a stepdad that only beat up on you when he was drunk and having a dad that bashed you up even when he was sober were two totally different things—Tim counted himself lucky that he had the former, and not the latter.

Unfortunately, Dally had caught the look on Tim's face before he'd masked it. "I don't want your fuckin' pity, Shepard," he snarled, turning around quickly to storm away. Tim grabbed his arm—woah, déjà vu— to stop him before he got more than a couple of steps, though.

"Shit, Dally," he murmured, running his hand through his curly black hair with a frustrated look on his face, "it ain't like that. I just… I didn't know you had it so bad. At home, I mean."

Dally stood there for an agonizingly long time, seemingly frozen in place, before he said anything. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, with only traces of the anger that had been in it only moments before.

"It's alright, man." He looked down at his shoes, suddenly very interested in them. They were looking pretty rough, just like the rest of him, it seemed—the left one was almost completely ripped out on one side, and the laces were knotted up so badly that he'd never get them untangled. Absently, he made a mental note to scope out a new pair of shoes the next time he was in a store. (So he could steal them, of course. There was no way in hell he was gonna _buy_ them.)

There was a long moment of awkward silence in which both of them looked at anything but each other, desperately trying to think of something to say. Finally, Dally couldn't take it anymore and blurted out a rushed goodbye before hurrying off down the street.

Dally had only been walking for a few minutes before his stomach started to growl. He hadn't had anything to eat last night, and what with his dad kicking him out again first thing this morning, he hadn't even had breakfast yet.

Groping in his pocket for some money, his hand closed over empty space. Cussing, he checked the rest of his pockets before conceding defeat. He knew he had some money stashed away under his bed back at home, but there was no way he was going back there until his dad had had a chance to pass out on the couch, or go to work—if he even had a job, which Dally seriously doubted—or something, whatever it was he did during the day. Dally usually didn't stick around long enough to find out.

It looked like he'd be going hungry, then, unless he felt like heading over to the Curtis's place for breakfast—hopefully Soda wasn't the one making it this morning, because he wasn't in the mood to eat anything that was undercooked, overcooked, or a color that it wasn't supposed to be.

He really didn't feel like having them freak out about the big chunks of glass stuck in the back of his head, but a) he was hungry, and b) he figured he'd better do something about them before he passed out from blood loss or something equally humiliating, so he adjusted his course to head for the Curtis's house where food, medical attention, and a bunch of irritatingly cheerful Greasers awaited him.

When he got there, he trudged up to the door and opened it, not bothering to knock. Dally, Steve, Two-Bit, and Johnny had long ago stopped knocking before they went inside, since the four of them were practically family, anyway. Stepping inside, he could hear voices in the kitchen and, slamming the door behind him, he walked across the living room into the kitchen. It looked like the whole gang was here today—Steve and Two-Bit were sitting at the table talking about some girl they'd seen at the movie house—"Did you _see _her tits? I mean, seriously, they were huge!"—while Soda leaned against the counter trying to put his socks on one-handed. Johnny and Pony were sitting at the other end of the table, talking about something in quiet voices and Darry was making pancakes.

"Mornin', Dally," Darry said, looking up from the stove.

"Mornin'," Dally replied, yawning loudly. There was a chorus of "morning"s and "hey"s, and he answered them all with a half-hearted grin and a quick "hey".

Flopping down into an empty chair, he propped his feet up on the edge of Steve's chair and leaned back, closing his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest. There was a sharp intake of breath behind him, and a voice that he identified immediately as Soda's exclaimed, "Glory, Dally, what happened to ya? You're bleedin' all over the place!"

Groaning in defeat—he'd already known they were gonna make a big deal out of it—he pushed himself up and muttered, "It's nothin'."

"Like hell it ain't!" Darry snapped, setting the last pancake on top of the stack he'd already made and turning off the burner hurriedly before turning away from the stove. "Lemme have a look."

Dallas rolled his eyes but didn't refuse. It really was hurting like a bitch and, although he would never admit it, he needed the help. If the injury had been anywhere else, he would've just dealt with it by himself, but it's a little difficult to deal with stuff like that when it's on the _back _of your head.

"Fine." Darry's hands prodded gently at the wounded area, brushing his hair out of the way to get a better look at it.

After several long moments, he sighed and said, "I can't even see anything, there's too much blood. Go wash your hair, see if you can get some of it off."

Normally Dally would've bristled at being told what to do—after all, Dallas Winston doesn't take orders from _anyone_—but since it was in his best interests to do as Darry said, he didn't say anything about it. Dally got to his feet slowly, using the edge of the table for support, and headed for the stairs.

Darry followed him without a word, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure no one else was coming with. He wanted a chance to talk to Dally about it in private—the blond, when asked about any injuries he was sporting, usually went into a blow-by-blow account of how he'd beaten the shit out of whoever'd given it to him, complete with hand motions and demonstrations.

Dally half-walked, half-staggered up the stairs and into the bathroom, leaning on the wall occasionally when he started to feel dizzy. The blood loss was really starting to affect him.

He made a beeline for the shower. Adjusting the taps so that the water was warm but not hot, he peeled off his shirt, tossed it on the floor, and ducked his head underneath the spray. He didn't even wince when the water hit the back of his head, although it had to've hurt something fierce.

Cussing in a low but pained voice, he carefully ran his hands through his hair. After a couple of minutes of scrubbing none-too-gently at the blood under his fingers, ignoring the stabs of pain when he accidentally rubbed over a piece of embedded glass and shoved it even deeper into his skin, he turned off the water.

He grabbed a towel to dry off with. In the process of getting the excess water out of his hair, he happened to glance into the tub. The water, still swirling in the drain, was tinged pink from all the blood.

Walking over to the sink, he leaned against the counter, cocking his hips to the left automatically in the same pose he used for leaning against cars or buildings when he was trying to look tuff.

…Not that he really needed to _try_. He could look tuff in his _sleep_, he told himself as he rubbed the towel through his hair.

Looking over his shoulder at Darry, who'd been standing in the doorway waiting for him to finish, he said, "Alright, Superman. Do whatever you gotta do."

Snorting, Darry took the towel from him and used it to wipe away the water on his shoulders and the back of his neck, as well as the blood that was already starting to well up from the cuts. He dug the first aid kit out from its place under the sink and put it on the countertop, rummaging through it in search of what he needed to get him patched up.

With the help of a pair of tweezers, he started to pick the pieces of glass out of Dally's neck and head, laying the bloody slivers on the edge of the sink and frowning at the size of some of the pieces that he was pulling out. A couple of them were over an inch long. Dally stood stiffly, unflinching, waiting for Darry to finish.

Darry picked out the last piece of glass and then pressed the already-bloody towel against the wounds, using it to help stop the bleeding.

"So…" the eldest Curtis brother began slowly as he uncapped a tube of antibiotic ointment and started smearing a thick layer of it onto all of the cuts and gashes. "…How exactly did this happen?"

"How did what happen? You picking chunks of glass outta my head? You should already know that, seein' as you was the one that _insisted _on lookin' at it and all—"

"Don't play dumb with me, Dallas," Darry said in a deceptively mild tone. "You know what I meant." He picked up the box of Band-Aids and started sticking them all over the back of Dally's neck, despite the lighter-haired boy's protests.

"Look, it ain't nothin' excitin', Darry," Dally snapped, getting sick of everyone asking about it.

"Well, it's _somthin'_," Darry snapped back, losing his patience. "Just tell me and I won't keep on asking about it."

"There ain't much ta tell." Dally finally gave in, realizing that if he wanted to eat breakfast anytime soon, he'd have to tell Darry what had happened. He wasn't in a lying mood, so he decided to just give Darry a quick explanation and then he could go have a couple of pancakes.

"My dad got mad at me an' started throwin' shit," he sighed. "Pegged me in the head with a bottle as I was makin' a break for it. Don't worry though, I still got my whole half a brain cell," he added coolly, turning away to pick up his shirt.

Darry saw what he was doing and said, "Don't bother with that, you can borrow one of Soda's shirts."

Dally made a face—anything of Soda's would be too big for him, after all he was the third shortest next to Johnny and Ponyboy—but left the bathroom without another word and went to grab a shirt out of Pony and Soda's closet. When he came back downstairs, everyone had already started eating, Darry included.

He flopped down onto the only open chair, at the end of the table between Steve and Johnny, and started piling pancakes and scrambled eggs onto his plate. When he ran out of room, he grabbed the syrup bottle and drowned his entire plate in it before he started eating. He wolfed the food down quickly, like it was going to disappear if he didn't eat it all fast enough. He was already halfway through his second pancake before he noticed that everyone had stopped talking. Looking up, he saw that everyone (everyone!) was staring at him with something akin to shock.

"Uh, Dally? Have you by any chance eaten _anything _in the last, oh, I dunno, three days?" Two-Bit asked slowly.

"Yeah," Dally said quickly before shoving another forkful of pancake into his mouth. Through a mouthful of food, he asked, "Why?"

"Cuz you're eatin' like a Curtis," Steve drawled, taking a bite of his eggs. Three voices yelped, "Hey!" in almost perfect unison. It was no secret that all three of the Curtis brothers ate like horses—constantly and in large quantities.

"It's not gonna crawl away if you don't cram it all in your mouth at once…then again, it **is **Darry's cookin' we're talkin' about…" Two-Bit trailed off with a teasing grin.

"Can it, greaser," Darry spoke up, eyes narrowed threateningly, "or I'll have y'all makin' your own breakfast from now on."

"NO!" everyone shouted nearly simultaneously. There was a long moment of silence before Soda started snickering, which set Steve off laughing, and pretty soon everybody was doubled over laughing, clutching at the table and/or each other for support.

After a little while they managed to settle down—sort of, anyway—and finish eating. Dally, yawning widely, got up from the table and headed into the living room. He collapsed onto the couch, rolled over onto his stomach so that his face was buried in the couch cushions, and fell asleep.

Watching this from the kitchen, Two-Bit commented, "You know, I've always wondered how he does that without suffocating himself…"

"It's a mystery," Darry replied dryly.

* * *

After Dally had fallen asleep—snoring loudly enough to wake the dead—everyone trooped outside so that they could talk without worrying about waking him up. They all sat down in the grass, leaning against the back of the house. Almost immediately, Two-Bit—who was stretched out on the ground, flat on his back with his arms folded behind his head—asked the question everyone was thinking about.

"So, did he tell you what happened?"

Darry nodded slowly, examining the paint on the house. It was faded and chipping, white with grime turning it a rather disgusting off-white/brownish color near the bottom. Grimacing, he turned his attention back to the five other Greasers, all of whom were watching him expectantly. "Yeah, he did. Sort of, anyway."

"And…?" Soda prompted, impatiently. Soda never could wait too long for anything.

In a low voice, Darry said, "Look, don't say nothin' about what I'm gonna tell y'all, OK? I don't think he wants everybody knowin'. Probably thinks it'll hurt his rep if everybody knew 'bout it." To anyone but the six of them, and possibly a few of the guys in Shepard's gang, it probably would've—Dallas Winston had a reputation for being the coldest, meanest, toughest hood in Tulsa, and knowing that his dad beat up on him—and didn't end up laying face-down on the floor with a knife in him—wouldn't have done anything but hurt his rep.

Everyone nodded in understanding, waiting for Darry to hurry up and spit it out. Two-Bit actually started to say something along those lines—"Hurry it up and tell us already, wouldya!"—but Pony elbowed him in the side to get him to shut up.

"It was his dad," Darry explained curtly. "From the looks of it, he threw a booze bottle at him, got him in the back of the head while he was makin' a break for it." Johnny and Steve both looked away at the announcement, thinking of the abuse they both suffered at their own fathers' hands. They were both used to having things—usually stuff that was very painful if it hit them—thrown at them by one or both of their parents.

There was a long moment of silence—a rarity at the Curtis's house, especially when Steve and/or Two-Bit were there—before Darry added, "It wasn't too bad, mostly just cuts an' nicks and all, but there were a couple of bigger ones that could probably use some stitches."

Sodapop, who was slouched against the corner of the house with one of his knees drawn up and both arms looped over it, raised an eyebrow at that and said, "There's no way he'll go to the hospital just for that."

Darry nodded. "I know he won't. He's too much of a stubborn cuss to do what's good for him." He picked at a blade of grass, twisting it in his fingers. "He don't have a concussion or nothin', thankfully. It'll hurt like a bitch for a while, though."

They sat there in silence for a while before Steve finally couldn't take it anymore and, looking slightly bewildered, burst out, "I didn't even know he hada _dad_! He never talks 'bout his family or nothin'."

"Hell, _I_ don't even know where he _lives_," Soda snorted, sitting up abruptly. "He knows damn near everythin' 'bout us but we don't know spit about him…why is that?"

Ponyboy said quietly, "Probably 'cuz he don't want us knowin' what things're like for him there. You know Dally—he's always gotta be actin' tuff. He ain't gonna talk 'bout nothin' that he thinks makes him look bad."

Everyone sat there in silence, thinking about the truth in Ponyboy's statement. It made sense.

Finally, after a few minutes of sitting in near dead silence, Two-Bit asked, "So, who wants ta play some poker?"

* * *

Dallas woke up several hours later, at a ridiculously late time of day. Stretching languidly, he started to roll over onto his back but froze mid-motion when the back of his neck erupted in pain. Clenching his teeth, he pushed himself up into a sitting position, gingerly touching the back of his head.

Behind him, a voice exclaimed, "Dally! You're alive!"

Whipping around, he asked, "Whaddaya mean 'I'm alive'?"

Going slightly red, Johnny explained, "Oh, we were just talkin' earlier 'bout how… um, 'bout how you sleep like the dead. Soda and Steve were yellin' and wrestlin' around on the floor an' everythin' an' you didn't even wake up…"

"Oh."

"…yeah."

"What time is it?" The question was punctuated with a jaw-cracking yawn.

"It's 'round four, I think," Johnny answered quietly. "You've been sleepin' for a while."

"Damn. I ain't gonna sleep at all tonight. Why the hell didn't somebody come an' wake me up?" he demanded, rubbing his face with his hands.

Johnny, grinning, replied, "We tried. Two-Bit sat on ya an' everythin', an' ya just shoved him off 'n went back ta sleep." With that, he wandered back into the kitchen to tell the others that 'Sleeping Beauty' had finally woken up and was as ornery as ever.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I am the queen of run-on sentences.

My apologies if they're all a little OOC—I tried to stick to the book characterization as much as possible, but I think I made Dally a little too nice and I'm pretty sure Johnny _never _talked that much. So yeah, sorry 'bout that. The next chapter should be up soon, I'm not entirely sure when, though.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Here's chapter two! Hopefully it's as good as the first one…

Anyway, thanks to everyone who's reviewed! I really appreciate it. hums Reviews make the world go round! Well, OK, not really, but you know what I mean.

* * *

Around six, Dally decided to head over to Buck's place. There was a party going on over there—when is there ever _not_ a party at Buck's place?—and he was getting restless just sitting around on the couch, watching Steve, Soda, and Two-Bit act like they had ADHD or something, what with the way they were bouncing off the walls. (Not literally, thank God.)

"Alright y'all, I'm outta here," Dally sighed, getting up off of the couch. He couldn't take it anymore—if he didn't leave _right now_ he'd probably snap and try to drown Two-Bit in the kitchen sink or something, just to get him to shut up for once. Looking around, he started to go find his jacket, but then he remembered that it was still sitting on his bed at home. Swearing, he shoved his feet into his shoes and left, slamming the door behind him.

Walking down the street, he frowned. Everyone had been acting a little…off. Nothing too obvious, but Dally was a pretty observant person and he'd noticed the looks they all kept shooting him. The same kind of look that they gave Johnny, or even Steve sometimes when they came in looking like they'd been beaten half to death by their fathers. Like they were worried about him, or something. Huh. He wondered just how much Darry had told them while he'd been conked out on the couch—probably everything, knowing Two-Bit's habit of prying every little detail out of everybody, even when it was something nobody really cared about that much.

A couple of Greaser girls walked by him, wearing extremely short skirts, and he half-turned to check them out. He let out a long, low wolf-whistle, and one of the girls turned around to shoot him a dirty look.

Leering, Dally winked at her and kept on walking, putting a bit of a strut into his step. If there was one thing he loved almost as much as fighting, it was flirting.

Fumbling in his pocket for a cigarette, he pulled out a slightly squashed package of Kools and hunted through the rest of his pockets for his matches. Finding them—like always—in the very last pocket he checked, he lit up and stuck it between his lips. He tucked the matches back into his pocket, making a mental note to get another matchbook soon. He was almost out.

Exhaling slowly, sending a stream of smoke out through his lips into the air, he glanced around.

He had to walk through one of the rougher parts of the neighborhood to get to Buck's place, and while none of the houses on the East Side were much to look at, the ones in this particular area were even worse than the norm. It was the kind of neighborhood where even the hoods had to watch out, because if they didn't they'd end up getting mugged or jumped, same as everybody else. Dally wasn't worried, though; his rep alone would ensure that nobody messed with him, and in the case that there was actually someone around dumb enough to try to rob him, he could handle a couple of not-too-bright hoods if it came down to it.

Running a hand through his hair, he sighed. He really needed to get a car or something; "borrowing" Buck's T-bird was kind of annoying when the destination _was _Buck's place. Glancing around—the streets were pretty much empty, except for a car at the end of the block and some kid on the porch across the street—he took a short cut by ducking through one of the alleyways.

It was filthy, which seemed pretty universal no matter _what _side of town you were in, but aside from that it wasn't too bad. There were a bunch of cardboard boxes piled at the end of it, next to a dented-up old trashcan, but other than that it was empty.

He headed down it, keeping an eye out for anybody lurking in the shadows, but the sound of footsteps behind him stopped that particular action.

Cursing under his breath, Dally turned to face whoever was following him. His stalker, a tall, thin kid with greasy brown hair and a too-big leather jacket, stopped too, eyeing him. It was the same kid that had been sitting on the porch—he recognized the hair, which wasn't anywhere close to as tuff-looking as his own was. Dally sized him up quickly—he'd never seen the kid before a minute and a half ago, but he didn't look like he'd be too much trouble so long as he didn't have any nasty surprises—a.k.a. blades or heaters—hidden away in his pockets.

"Whattaya want?" he snapped, shooting the greasy hood an irritated look.

The kid shot him a surprised look, like he was shocked that Dally wasn't scared at all. Dally almost laughed at the thought. Yeah, OK, he was kind of on the short side and not exactly body-builder material, but he'd beaten up people a lot bigger and tougher than this scrawny-looking kid. He couldn't have been any older than fifteen or sixteen, and that was a _generous_ estimate.

"Gimme all your money," the kid said loudly, brandishing a switchblade. Dally eyed it disdainfully, secretly a little amused by the kid's rather pathetic attempt at robbery. It was downright laughable; even with a blade in hand, the kid looked like exactly that—a kid.

"Put that thing away, kid, before you hurt yourself," he sneered, shooting the hood a venomous glare. He really didn't want to have to deal with this right now. "Besides, I don't got any."

The kid gulped audibly, but didn't back down. The virtually non-existent respect Dallas had for him ratcheted up a notch; stupid he may have been, but he obviously wasn't a coward—or, at least, not much of one.

"Don't lie ta me! You got some!" the guy snarled, taking a step forward. Dally took one last drag on his cigarette before throwing it on the ground and grinding it out with the toe of his sneaker. Then he pulled out his own switchblade, making sure that the kid could see it. The greasy-haired kid's eyes widened slightly at the, to his mind, sudden change in dynamics, apparently realizing he'd picked the wrong guy to mug.

"I ain't in the fuckin' mood for this right now," Dallas snarled, stalking forward. "So get the fuck outta my face, kid." The greasy-haired hood swallowed, his face betraying his fear, but he stood his ground. Dally had to admit that the kid had balls, to still be standing there while faced with a royally pissed-off Dallas Winston armed with a switchblade.

The kid's pride was on the line now, and although he looked a little uncertain, he met Dally's eye and said, "Make me."

Slowly, deliberately, Dally pocketed his blade and beckoned to the other boy. A wolfish grin crept onto his face in anticipation. "You want a fight?"

He didn't give the kid a chance to reply, continuing in his most conversational tone, "Cuz you sure as hell found one."

He punched the kid in the face, hard, sending him crashing to his knees with a grunt of pain. The switchblade dropped from his hand, and Dally kicked it out of reach, just in case the kid decided he didn't want to fight fair.

The so-called 'mugger' shook his head to clear his vision and lunged at Dally, sending both of them stumbling backwards into the wall. Dally was slammed up against the brick wall harshly, hard enough to leave bruises. The kid slugged him in his face, and the back of his head hit the wall. As luck would have it, it was the side that he'd just had what seemed like an entire bottle's worth of glass picked out of the day before. Pain exploded in the back of his head, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Opening them again quickly, everything went slightly gray around the edges for a moment before his vision returned again.

Ignoring the pain, Dally started fighting back. Even in his battered condition, he quickly got the upper hand. He grabbed the kid's shoulders and slammed him back against the wall with enough force to knock the air out of him, then pressed an arm across the boy's throat, effectively pinning him there. Dallas slammed the kid's head into the wall, mirroring what had just been done to him, and then slugged him in the face a couple of times. He let him go then, rubbing his bruised knuckles and watching the boy slump to the ground, panting harshly.

Dallas turned and started to walk away, figuring that the kid would just give up, but before he'd gone more than a couple of steps something—or rather, someone—slammed into him from behind.

He stumbled forward and crashed into the stack of cardboard boxes, and they collapsed under his weight. Hands grabbed at his jacket, trying to get ahold of his arms, and accidentally grabbed onto one of the bruised areas. Cussing, Dally rolled over and took a wild swing at the person on top of him. His fist connected with the kid's jaw, but it was only a glancing blow and didn't do much damage.

Getting right up in his face, breathing harshly—his breath smelled horrible, like something that had been dead and rotting on the side of the road for weeks, possibly in the middle of July—the kid elbowed him in the face and his head snapped back from the blow. Somehow he'd bitten his tongue—hot blood flooded his mouth and he nearly gagged on the metallic taste of it.

Snarling, Dally popped him one in the ribs and tried to shove him off. When that didn't work, Dally kneed him as hard as he could in the stomach.

Suddenly, the fight was over.

Groaning loudly, the greasy-haired mugger doubled over, clutching at his stomach. He was soon on his knees on the ground, trying to get his breath back after having the wind knocked out of him.

Dally watched him gasping for air with an unreadable expression on his face. His eyes were as cold and hard as ever, but there was a brightness to them that could only be attributed to the adrenaline rush of a fight.

Deciding that he deserved something for being inconvenienced, he pawed through the kid's jacket until he found his wallet. There wasn't a whole lot in it, but there was enough to cover a few beers at Buck's place.

Smirking, he took out the cash and threw the wallet on the ground next to the kid. Humming cheerfully, he put the money in his own wallet and pocketed it. He turned and left, leaving his would-be mugger doubled over on his knees in the middle of the alleyway.

* * *

Dallas limped for the rest of the walk over to Buck's. He'd bashed up his knee pretty good when the kid had jumped on him from behind, and although it wasn't broken or anything, it fucking _hurt_. Once he was in sight of Buck's, though, he forced himself to walk normally despite the pain. Showing weakness in front of the kind of people that hung out there was akin to throwing yourself to the wolves. They'd tear you apart in no time flat if they thought they could get away with it.

Dally strolled inside and headed straight for the makeshift bar. He could definitely use some booze right about now.

Sliding onto one of the stools up at the bar, he ordered a couple of beers and smiled wolfishly at a couple of drunken broads seated a little farther down. One of them, a blonde with very nice-looking legs, smiled back, but the dark-haired girl beside her just glared at him, taking a sip from her beer.

The bartender slid a couple of beer bottles across the counter to him and waited impatiently for the money. Dallas, deciding that he felt like being an irritating bastard, reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, practically in slow motion. He pretended to be absorbed in digging through his wallet for the right amount, watching the bartender's face out of the corner of his eye. The man was glaring at him in a way that kind of reminded Dally of the cops whenever they picked him up for doing something illegal. He ducked his head to hide the grin that was threatening to engulf his face—this was _way _too much fun.

Eventually, though, he decided that he didn't want to piss the bartender off _too _much—after all, he planned on getting more beer in the near future, and hacking off the guy that handed it out wasn't a very smart move—so he handed over the money and, with an incredibly cheesy smile, said, "Sorry 'bout that, I hope I didn't keep you waitin' too long."

Through gritted teeth, the bartender replied, "Oh, not at all," and walked away with an expression on his face that made it very clear that he'd very much like to slug him in the face.

Resisting the urge to hum cheerfully—he didn't want to ruin his rep for being a cold, mean bastard, after all—he chugged down half a bottle and got up to go socialize. Usually he wandered around the room and hit on all the drunken broads, picked fights with random people, and/or talked with some of the other guys he knew there—tonight was no different.

Eventually, though, the inevitable happened—he ran into Tim Shepard again. Literally.

Cussing vehemently, he grabbed onto the edge of one of the nearby couches and pulled himself to his feet. Tim stayed flat on his back on the floor, holding his left elbow—which he'd bashed on the floor when he'd fallen—with a pained expression on his face.

"Damn it, Winston, we gotta stop meetin' like this!" he said loudly. "At this rate, by next week I'll be lookin' like one of those women ya see on the covers of those _'You Are Not Alone'_ pamphlet thingys."

"What?" Dallas asked, frowning in confusion.

"Y'know what I'm talkin' 'bout—the 'battered wives' things the hospitals pass out all the time?"

"Right…" Dally said slowly, with an incredulous expression on his face. "How d'you know about those, anyways? Somebody think you're a 'battered wife', Timmy?"

Tim's face took on a dark look. He hated it when people called him Timmy; of course, Dally knew that and did it as often as he could. Suddenly, a grin spread across the dark-haired hood's face. "Nah, they gave it to me to pass along to you." He gave Dally's bashed-up face—complete with the re-split lip from the fight he'd been in earlier—a pointed look. "Looks like you need it more than I do."

"Go fuck yourself, Shepard. That's the only way you're gonna get any for a long, long time."

"Ooh, someone's a bit touchy today," Tim drawled, cocking an eyebrow mockingly. "What's got you actin' so bitchy? Oh, wait, never mind. That's your default settin', isn't it?" he said mockingly, smirking.

Dally stepped closer, practically right up in his face, and glowered at him. "_I'm _the one actin' bitchy?" he said incredulously. "You're the one that won't fuckin' back off!"

Tim crossed his arms, leaning against the closest (surprisingly, empty) couch, and smirked. "Come on, Dally, when have you _ever _known me ta back off? I'm a fuckin' jackass, you know that, man. That's why we get along so well, two of a kind? 'M I ringin' any bells here?" He paused to dig through his pockets in search of a cigarette. Finding one, he lit up and took a long drag. Glancing up, he saw the stony look on Dally's face and sighed, releasing a puff of smoke into the air.

"Fuck, Dally, if looks could kill I'd be a dead man right about now."

When Dallas continued to glower darkly at him, using the expression that Tim had secretly dubbed 'The Glare Of Death', he sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes in an exaggerated fashion. "OK, OK, I'm done now, man. You stop tryin' ta burn holes in me with yer eyes, an' I'll shut up. We gotta deal?"

Dally stood there for a moment, his face stony, before he suddenly grinned. The split-second change of expression was a little unnerving. "Shit, man, and I thought _Angela_ was the drama queen in your family. You keep your trap shut, an' we gotta deal." He flopped down onto the couch and raised an eyebrow at Tim. "You gotta weed, Tim?"

Deciding that a cigarette was a small price to pay to keep himself on Dally's good side—and his car tires safe; Dallas had a bad habit of vandalizing shit when he was pissed off at somebody—Tim handed one over and claimed the other end of the couch.

"So, Dally, you get in another fight?" he asked abruptly, recalling the most recent damage to the younger boy's face.

"Yep." Dally put his feet up, kicking off his beat-up sneakers. He turned so that his back was up against the armrest and stretched his legs out, monopolizing two-thirds of the couch. He would've put his feet in Tim's lap, just to piss him off, but he had the feeling that he'd get the shit pounded out of him for it, and while normally he'd be spoiling for a good fight—Tim was a strong fighter, and usually gave as good as he got—he really wasn't in good enough shape at the moment to take on Tim Shepard in anything resembling a fair fight. They were pretty evenly matched, so long as the switchblades didn't come out, but that was when Dally _wasn't _looking—and feeling—like he'd been run over by a semi-truck.

"Some fucker tried ta jump me on my way over," he snorted, a disgusted look on his face. "He hadta be the dumbest guy I've ever seen—and that includes Curly, by the way—I mean he actually thought I had _money_."

Tim burst out laughing, completely ignoring the insult to his kid brother; a couple of people sitting nearby looked over at them, startled. It wasn't often that you saw Dallas Winston and Tim Shepard, the two toughest hoods in Tulsa, sitting around together _laughing_.

"_Nobody's_ got money around here," Tim snorted, rolling his eyes at the sheer stupidity of Dally's 'mugger'.

"Yeah, I know. I kept waitin' for the punch line, but the guy was _serious_." He grimaced. "I shoulda messed him up a little more, made sure he don't forget me in a hurry, but it's not as much fun when they can't even throw a decent punch atcha."

Tim nodded in agreement, and changed the subject to the most recent Incredibly Stupid Thing Curly had done. They ended up spending the rest of the night on the couch, alternately insulting each other and talking about whatever random stuff they could think of.

Eventually, around two in the morning, Dally fell asleep mid-way through Tim telling him about how his sister Angela was dating one of the Brumly boys—"What the hell does she see in him? I mean, mosta the Brumly boys're dumber than dirt, an' he's ugly to boot!"—and after about twenty minutes, Tim followed suit.

It was actually a pretty comical sight, the two of them conked out on the couch, snoring, with Dallas's head pillowed against Tim's shoulder; somehow they'd migrated towards the middle of the couch while the two of them had been talking, and Dally'd fallen asleep and slumped over to lean against Tim.

It was downright sappy-looking.

* * *

The next morning Dally woke up to the sound of snoring. Really, really loud snoring. Practically right in his ear. Moaning, he tried to pull the pillow over his head to block out the noise, but then he realized that he didn't have a pillow. His face was smushed up against something solid. The something shifted after a moment, startling him into opening his eyes. Looking up blearily, he saw Tim's face barely two inches away from his own.

Stifling a very unmanly yelp, he sat up abruptly and scooted backwards until he was sitting on the other end of the couch, as far away as he could get while still being on said couch. He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture he'd had since he was little, and cleared his throat loudly.

The sudden motions caused Tim to bolt awake, too. He looked around wildly before noticing Dally sitting at the other end of the couch, watching him with an unreadable expression on his face.

Abruptly, Dally said, "I'm gonna go. See ya, Tim."

He stood up quickly, jammed his feet into his sneakers, and headed for the door. Tim just sat there, frowning in confusion, wondering what the hell was going on and why Dallas had been acting so weird lately. Normally you couldn't get him to shut up, but the last couple of days had been a struggle even getting him to talk. Well, the night before he'd been pretty chatty, but that was after a couple of beers. Dally always had been a talker when he got buzzed.

Dallas stumbled out the front door. He nearly tripped on the bottom step, but managed to stay upright. The screen door closed behind him with a bang, and he started walking, his feet automatically leading him in the direction of the Curtis's house. That's the way it always was—when he didn't have a particular destination in mind, he wandered over to the Curtis's, usually without even meaning to.

As he walked, he felt his mind drift back to Buck's living room. He'd fallen asleep in public with his head on another guy's shoulder.

Shit. That was bad.

Not only would it hurt his rep if anybody found out—cold, tough hoods did _not _fall asleep with their heads on people's shoulders—but it'd been just plain strange, too. He'd never done anything like that before. Except with Sylvia, but that didn't really count since it'd been _her _that fell asleep with her head on _his _shoulder, and it was different if it was a girl, plus he'd ended up shoving her off of him pretty quick so he could get up to go get another beer… yeah, that one totally didn't count.

He wandered down the street, taking the same shortcut through the alleyway that he'd used the night before. Thankfully, there was nobody around and he made it through that part of town without getting mugged, threatened, or otherwise accosted.

Strangely, he was somewhat grateful for the lack of excitement on his walk so far. Normally he'd have been spoiling for a fight right about then, but with the combination of his recent injuries and the whole head-on-another-guy's-shoulder thing to freak out about, he really wasn't in the mood—or condition—to be tangling with anybody.

About a block from the Curtis's place, a brand-new red Mustang driving by startled Dally out of his thoughts. Someone inside leaned out the window and yelled, "GREASER!" as they drove past him, making it sound like it was some sort of terrible insult.

Rolling his eyes, Dallas waved his middle finger at the retreating car and kept on walking. He jammed his fists back into his pockets and kicked at an empty beer can lying in the gutter.

Didn't they have anything better to do? He wondered somewhat bitterly what they were doing on the East Side at this time of the morning—it couldn't have been any later than eight-thirty or nine—when they could be back home in their big fancy houses, sleeping off last night's beer blast in their king-sized beds while their parents had the maids make them breakfast.

With a silent snarl, he stalked the rest of the way up the street. He cut across the Curtis's neighbor's lawn and walked across the porch. He didn't even hesitate at the door, just opened it and strolled inside.

He was completely unsurprised by what he found inside. Ponyboy was seated on the couch, reading a book like usual, and Darry was in his armchair and Johnny and Two-Bit were on the couch, all three of them watching some game show on TV. Steve and Soda were in the kitchen, doing only God knows what, but judging from the laughter and strange sounds he was hearing, it wasn't something he wanted to know about. Dally wondered vaguely why they weren't at work, then remembered that the DX was undergoing renovations and the two of them wouldn't be going back to work until the end of the week.

Dally let the screen door slam shut behind him and headed straight for the kitchen, hoping that they hadn't eaten yet.

"Hey there, ya'll," he called out as he wandered into the kitchen, elbowed a red-faced, laughing Steve out of the way, and started looking through the icebox for something edible. There was a ragged chorus of "Hey Dally"s from the rest of the gang, but he was too focused on finding something to eat to really pay attention to anything the others were saying, or even really notice what it was Steve and Soda were doing. He sort of had the feeling that he didn't really want to know, either.

He eventually settled on a big chunk of chocolate cake. Getting himself a slice, Dally flopped unceremoniously into one of the chairs gathered around the kitchen table.

He then proceeded to pick up his fork, scrape all the icing off the cake, and wipe it on an empty section of plate. He always saved eating the icing for last, so that the taste would stay in his mouth afterwards. Dally loved chocolate just as much as he loved booze, if that was even possible.

Shoveling a huge forkful of cake into his mouth, he couldn't ignore the two Greasers standing at the kitchen counter anymore and finally decided to see what the hell they were doing. Turning in his seat, he eyed the two of them suspiciously. There was something sitting on the counter between them—or rather, several somethings. Mustard, ketchup, sugar, mayonnaise, grape jelly, syrup, salt. There was more, but he honestly didn't care enough to identify everything.

As he watched, Steve mixed the ketchup, sugar, jelly, and mayonnaise together and pushed the plate—he could see from his place at the table that it had several splotches on it in a variety of colors—over to Soda, who grimaced and said, "That's pretty nasty lookin'."

Steve grinned and said, "Yep."

He looked at the handsome Greaser expectantly, like he was waiting for something. Finally, making a disgusted face, Soda swiped a finger through the mess and licked it off. Almost immediately he started gagging, a horrified look on his face. Steve, still grinning, laughed at the expression on his face. Soda rushed over to the sink and started gulping down water; after a moment, he pulled back from where he'd been drinking straight from the faucet and stumbled back to his spot by Steve.

He surveyed the selection in front of him before grabbing the mustard and grape jelly, an evil look on his face. Steve gulped audibly.

Cocking an eyebrow incredulously, Dallas asked, "Glory, you two. What the hell're ya doin'?"

Soda was the one to answer him, most of his attention focused on mixing several different condiments together on the plate. "Just messin' around."

Dally snorted. It was pretty obvious what they were doing—forcing each other to taste-test increasingly gag-worthy combinations of household food items, trying to see who'd chicken out—or throw up, whichever happened first. (If either of them got to that point, that is. Dally was betting they were both getting fairly close to said point, if the looks on their faces were any indication.)

Soda slid the plate back down the counter to Steve, who examined the thick, somewhat chunky substance with a queasy expression. Dally smirked; they weren't going to last much longer. Both of them were too competitive to stop, though, so they'd keep going until one of them finally puked.

"Nasty," he said, getting up from his chair. He really didn't want to be there when one of them finally lost it. More than likely, one of them hurling would trigger the other one, too… yuck. Not something he wanted to see when he was eating.

Without another word, he picked up his plate with its half-eaten cake chunk and padded over into the living room. He squeezed himself onto the couch between Johnny and Two-Bit, elbowing the latter of the two to get himself a little more room, and started watching TV. Two-Bit tried to steal a bite of his cake, but he slapped his hand away with a growl.

"Go get your own!" he snarled, holding the plate to his chest protectively. "This one's mine!"

"Fine then. Be that way," Two-Bit snapped back, trying to sound offended and not really pulling it off. The laughter in his voice gave him away.

Dally snorted and turned back to his cake, only to find that one of the corners had disappeared while he'd been distracted by Two-Bit. Eyes narrowed, he looked over at Johnny. The black-haired kid quickly adopted an innocent look, but the chocolate around his mouth told an entirely different story.

"You little weasel," he breathed, surprised that Johnny of all people would take advantage of his distraction in such a way. "Looks like a guy can't even eat his own cake in peace around here," he added before shoveling another forkful into his mouth.

All five of them—Dally, Johnny, Two-Bit, Ponyboy, and Darry—looked over when a triumphant yell came from the kitchen, which was quickly followed by rapid footsteps and retching sounds.

Curious, Two-Bit got up and wandered into the kitchen. After a moment of silence, he reappeared in the doorway and yelled, "Looks like Soda lost! Man, that's gross."

There was a muffled gagging noise, and then he added, wrinkling his nose comically, "Eww, Steve, I'm pretty sure it's not normal to puke purple."

* * *

A/N: I hope you liked the chapter. The scene at Buck's in particular was hard to write, but I hope it still turned out OK.

There might be a little bit of mild Soda/Steve slash in the later chapters—the main focus is still going to be on Dally/Tim, but I wanted to maybe work Steve and Soda in as a secondary pairing. What are your guys' feelings on that? For or against it?


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Here's chapter three! Again, I'd like to thank everyone that reviewed. I love feedback, the more the better. : I think this chapter's been the hardest one to write so far; I'm still not too happy with the way this one turned out, but I wanted to get it posted.

Seriously, let me know what you think of this. I feel like I went a little OOC in this chapter.

* * *

Since he was already there, Dally decided to crash on the Curtis's couch that night. He ended up having to fight Steve for it—his dad had kicked him out again, and the dark-haired mechanic had turned up a little before midnight with a rapidly-blackening eye and a split lip—but since he'd been too sleepy to put up much of a fight at the time, he'd ended up sleeping on the floor in front of the TV instead.

The upside to having to sleep on the floor was that when Two-Bit showed up in the morning and went to flop down on the couch, it was Steve that got sat on instead of him. Grumbling, the dark-haired Greaser shoved Two-Bit off of him onto the floor, narrowly missing the coffee table.

Cussing loudly, Two-Bit picked himself up. He pushed Steve's legs out of the way before sitting back down and asked loudly, "What was that for, man?"

"What do you _think _it was for?" Steve muttered back, shooting him a look that could only be described as a death-glare.

He kicked Two-Bit's thigh for emphasis, just to make sure that the red-haired Greaser had gotten the hint. _Leave me the fuck alone, I'm trying to sleep here._

Two-Bit made a face, scrunching up his nose comically, and retorted, "Y'know, I don't think I like it when my questions get answered with more questions."

"Yeah? Whatcha gonna do about it, huh?" Steve mumbled irritably, shifting onto his side so that he could glare (somewhat blearily) at Two-Bit without having to lift his head up. Two-Bit didn't say anything in reply, but grinned wickedly, propping his feet up on the edge of the coffee table slowly and deliberately.

"I'll think of somethin'," he drawled, grinning so cheerfully that it was actually kind of unnerving. (It reminded Dally of a clown's smile—he'd seen one at the circus once, when he was a little kid, and he'd always thought they were creepy, especially the way they smiled really wide and it looked so goddamn _fake_.)

Steve eyed him warily, having just realized exactly what his last words had opened him up to. He swallowed thickly and started to sit up, keeping his eyes trained on Two-Bit the entire time like he thought that something terrible would happen if he looked away for even a second. Which, considering the fact that it was Two-Bit, was entirely possible.

Dally smirked. He wanted to stick around and watch Two-Bit get his revenge, but his bladder was also vying for his attention, and he figured the Curtises wouldn't be too happy if he started laughing so hard that he pissed all over their floor. Disentangling himself from the blanket he'd somehow managed to cocoon himself in, he stood up and headed for the stairs. He'd only gotten about halfway up, though, when he heard a loud crash and a startled yelp from down below.

Damn. He'd missed it. He'd been kind of hoping that Two-Bit would wait until he came back to hand out whatever revenge he'd apparently just had…

Shrugging to himself, he wandered into the bathroom and took care of 'business'. Then, after shaving off his days-old stubble using one of Darry's razors, he headed back downstairs. He could hear loud voices down below—Steve sounded pissed, and Two-Bit was laughing about something.

A third voice joined in a moment later. It was Johnny from the sounds of it, no one else in the gang talked that softly, with the possible exception of Ponyboy, but Johnny's voice was a little bit deeper so he could usually tell them apart. Things were quiet for a long moment before someone tripped over something—probably the coffee table—and knocked it over with a loud crash.

Someone started swearing, and he couldn't help but grin. It sounded like it was shaping up to be a typical day at the Curtis household.

* * *

Dally left after lunch, deciding that he was bored and wanted to go "hunt some action".

"You guys wanna come with?" he asked Steve and Soda, both of whom were sitting on the couch playing poker. Dally wasn't really sure why they even bothered; neither of them were very good at it. Soda in particular sucked at bluffing.

"Nah, me and Steve are meetin' up with Sandy and Evie later," Soda replied, biting his lip as he examined the cards he was holding. Judging from the look on his face, it was a pretty bad hand. "Maybe we'll catch up with ya afterwards."

"Alright," Dallas said, shrugging. "I guess I'll see y'all later then."

He started to grab his jacket off of the back of the couch, where he usually put it, before remembering that his jacket was still at his dad's house.

He drew his hand back with a frown; that was the second time in as many days that he'd done that. Maybe it was a reflex or something; get up, get his jacket, get out. He'd have to stop by and grab it before he did anything else—he knew he had a wad of cash stuffed in one of the pockets, and he could really use the money, seeing as he was flat broke at the moment—but he didn't want to have another run-in with his dad.

It wasn't that he was scared of him; Dally had stopped being scared of his father a long time ago. No, he just didn't want to hear anything his dad had to say to him, since most of it was bullshit and all of it was insulting.

He didn't want to listen to that, knowing that there was probably a grain of truth to all of his father's rants about how he was stupid and worthless and a waste of space.

(He would never admit it, but Dally knew deep down that some of the shit he did was just plain bad. Even that knowledge wasn't enough to change him, though. He'd lived his entire life lying, cheating, and stealing to keep from dying in a gutter somewhere, and he wasn't about to let what few morals he possessed get in the way of his survival.)

He shoved those self-depreciating thoughts to the back of his mind and turned to go.

Steve gave him a half-assed wave before turning back to their card game. Before he turned away, Dally caught sight of a triumphant gleam in Steve's eyes—apparently he could tell that Soda didn't have any good cards, too. It was written all over Soda's face, and while Steve wasn't the most perceptive of people, Soda had been his best friend since grade school and he'd learned to read him pretty well.

Actually, pretty much everybody in the gang could read each other pretty accurately—maybe because they'd all grown up together, "thick as thieves" and "making like brothers" and all that. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that most of them couldn't bluff to save their lives, with the possible exceptions of Two-Bit and Darry, and of course Dallas himself.

Dally walked out the door and across the front porch, letting the screen door bang shut behind him. He started off in the direction of his dad's house, hoping that he wasn't home, or at least if he was that he was already drunk and passed out in front of the TV and wouldn't even notice Dallas's presence.

Dally's luck wasn't really that good, though. Chances were slim to none that he'd be able to just grab his stuff and go without his dad putting in an appearance.

He kicked half-heartedly at a booze bottle lying in the gutter; it rolled away and came to rest a few feet farther down, right in the middle of the entrance to somebody's driveway. Shrugging, he left it there. If somebody got a flat tire because they weren't watching out for stuff on the ground, well, then it was their own fault, wasn't it?

He walked slowly, taking as many detours as possible, stopping to talk to random people on the streets—most of whom he didn't even _know_—and just generally dicking around, but soon enough—far too soon, in Dally's opinion—he found himself standing at the end of his own driveway, trying to gauge whether or not there was anybody home. His dad's truck wasn't in the driveway, but that didn't guarantee that no one was there.

Dallas slipped inside quietly, keeping his footsteps light and closing the door softly. 'Glory', he thought to himself with disgust, 'you know it's bad when you're scared to make noise in your own goddamn house.'

Glass shards crunched under his feet as he made his way silently through the kitchen and past the living room, deftly avoiding the empty booze bottles littering the floor. His father didn't clean up much, and when he did it could hardly be called _cleaning_, so it was no surprise that there was still the same busted glass all over the floor that had been there for weeks already.

His father was nowhere in sight—that meant that he was probably out somewhere, most likely doing something thatinvolved getting high, drunk, or arrested.

James Winston was just as bad, if not worse, than his son was when it came to fighting, drinking, and drugs—the last of which was one of the few things that Dally _didn't _do. He wasn't into drugs, preferring to keep a semi-clear head and stay in control of himself.

He was borderline alcoholic, true, but he rarely drank enough to not remember what had happened the night before, and when he _did _get that smashed it was usually because he was seriously pissed off and needed something to help him relax.

He went into his room, navigating his way through the mess on the floor—even though he didn't even really _live _there, there was still a ton of stuff all over the floor for some reason, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the majority of it had been "borrowed" from someone else's house, or car, or garage, hell, maybe even their pockets—over to his bed, where his prized jacket was lying on top of the rumpled covers.

He picked it up and slipped it on, then patted the pockets down in search of the wad of money he knew was in one of them. He couldn't recall which one it was, though; probably the left one, that was the one he always seemed to find money in even if he didn't remember putting any in there.

Finding a lump in the left pocket, he pulled it out and stuffed the wad of bills into his wallet, then got down on his hands and knees to look under the bed. Shoving a stack of dirty magazines out of the way—in any other situation he would've stopped to glance at them, but he was sort of in a hurry—Dally pulled out a battered-looking shoebox. Biting his lip, he took off the lid and looked through what was inside.

There wasn't much in it, mostly just legal documents and crap like that, a few other odds and ends that might come in handy, and some money he'd been saving, but then again, he didn't really need much. Dallas had learned the lessons of survival the hard way—through experience—and he'd grown used to not having much besides the clothes on his back and the stuff in his pockets.

The sound of someone pulling into the driveway startled him; he'd hoped that he could get in and out without running into Winston Sr. but it looked like it wasn't going to turn out that way. He rushed over to the window and looked out. His dad's truck, a battered old Ford, was parked in the driveway and a very familiar figure was sitting in the driver's seat.

'What the hell did you just get yourself into, you idiot?' he thought to himself. 'Why the fuck didn't you just sneak in once he was passed out on the couch or something?' He felt like hitting himself for his stupidity; this wouldn't even be happening if he had just waited until nightfall.

Letting loose a string of swearwords that probably would've made even Two-Bit blush (and that was no easy feat), Dally stuck the lid back on the shoebox and shoved it back under the bed.

Dally stood up quickly and glanced out the window again, checking to see if Winston Sr. had made it out of the truck yet. The big, hulking man was still sitting there in the driver's seat, fumbling with something in the passenger's seat next to him. Dallas couldn't make out what it was, but it looked like a cardboard box of some sort.

Dally ruthlessly squashed the panic that was starting to well up within him and started towards the front of the house, knowing that hiding in his room would do him no good. He'd still have to get past his father, who would more than likely park himself in the living room and stay there for the rest of the day, and then there'd be the added 'bonus' of having to wait for a chance to leave unnoticed.

He would've just climbed out the window, but a) that might have worked when he was younger, but he'd grown a lot and there was no way in hell he was going to be able to fit through that ridiculously tiny window, and b) his father was still sitting there in his truck, which was in perfect view of said window. There was no way he was going to get out that way and not get caught.

Running his hand through his hair, Dally stalked into the living room and over to the big window behind the couch. Pulling back the smoke-stained curtain, he looked out the window and swore; Winston Sr. was nowhere in sight.

He started to walk quickly back towards his room, which was probably the one room in the house his father never went in without a damn good reason, but froze mid-step at the sound of the front door opening. He started to bolt for his room, where at least he could lock the door, but it was too late.

"What the fuck are you doin' here?! I thought I told ya to get the fuck outta my house, you stupid little bastard!" James Winston snarled, slamming the door hard enough that it bounced a couple of times before going still. He threw the big cardboard box he was holding on the floor carelessly and advanced on his son, his face darkened in anger.

Dallas started to back up in the direction of the kitchen, trying to put some distance between himself and his father. He had no qualms about throwing a few punches, but he knew that in his current state there was a good chance he'd just get his face bashed in.

Face twisted into an ugly scowl—the expression certainly didn't do anything to improve his looks, quite the opposite in fact—the huge, hulking man crossed the space between them in only a couple of long strides and grabbed him roughly by the arm, his fingers squeezing mercilessly on the hand print-shaped bruises that were already there.

Snarling, Dally pried his arm out of his father's bruising grip. "Get the fuck off of me!"

"Don't you fucking talk to me like that!" his father bellowed angrily, stalking forward. Dallas tried to get past his father, to get out before things turned even uglier, but James was standing in the way, blocking the path to the door.

Angrily, he tried to shoulder his way past the much larger man. It was pointless though. James just grabbed him by the shoulder, fingers sliding on the slick surface of Dally's leather jacket, and spun him around, slamming him into the wall beside the door with enough force to knock the air out of him. Not even pausing to catch his breath, Dally squirmed wildly, thrashing around like a wild animal in his desperation to escape.

He almost—_almost_—got away, but James grabbed him by the neck and shoved him back against the wall before he could get more than a couple of steps, lifting him so that his feet weren't even touching the ground.

Sometimes it really sucked being so short.

Snarling, Dallas hauled off and slugged his father, catching him in the stomach with enough force to rock him back on his heels. Howling in pain, James dropped him abruptly, so quickly that he didn't have a chance to get his feet all the way under him before he hit the floor. He landed heavily with one leg still bent at an awkward angle, and red-hot fire jolted through his knee, making him gasp in pain.

Pushing himself to his feet, using the wall for support, he half-walked, half-staggered towards his father, who was still clutching at his stomach with his face screwed up in pain. His father was still trying to get his breathing under control—apparently Dally had punched him even harder than he'd thought he had. While James was distracted, Dally used the opportunity to slug him in the face a couple of times.

Hopped up on adrenaline, Dally smashed his fists into his father's face, over and over again, reigning down blow after blow on the man that had caused him so much misery over the years. He knew that if he didn't keep at it, not giving his father a chance to punch him back, then James would pound him into the floor without a second thought. If he let his father get the upper hand, then he was as good as dead.

He thought it was a little ironic, that he was widely acknowledged—along with Tim Shepard, of course—as one of the two toughest hoods in Tulsa, and yet here he was scared half to death of his own father when he'd handled bigger, meaner guys before without so much as a second thought.

He felt a distinct crunch under his fist as James's nose broke. Blood gushed down his face and smeared across Dallas's knuckles, but the blond-haired hood paid it no mind and kept on swinging.

After a couple more solid punches, Dally backed off and watched as his father slumped to the floor, holding his head in his hands and breathing raggedly. Blood dripped from his face onto the stained carpet below him.

Panting, Dally stumbled towards the door. He had to get out before his father recovered enough to come after him, because he had no doubt that his father would kill him for what he'd just done if he got his hands on him. At the doorway, he paused just long enough to look back at the crumpled form of his father, who was lying, nearly unconscious, in a slowly spreading pool of his own blood.

Expression blank, he turned and limped away, out into the street.

* * *

Halfway down the block he started to stumble; his knee was throbbing mercilessly and his head hurt so badly it felt like it was about to explode. Not wanting anyone to be witness to him collapsing out in the middle of the street, he forced himself to keep walking and staggered over to the nearest car, a beat-up old Plymouth with the taillights busted out.

Yanking the door open—he was a little surprised it wasn't locked, what with the fact that cars getting stolen happened on a daily basis on the East Side, but then again who'd want to steal a piece of junk like this?—he slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut again. He just sat there for a long moment, trying to get back in control of himself and force down the panic.

He'd have to go back later on and get all of his stuff out of his room, before his dad decided to burn all of it or something. He didn't really have anywhere else to go, besides Buck's—where he could only stay if he paid for a room full-time, which he didn't want to do—or the Curtis's place, and he didn't want to freeload off of them when Darry was having so much trouble paying the bills and everything as it was, without having another mouth to feed.

Swearing under his breath, he tried to think of somewhere he could go, if only to have somewhere to keep his stuff. He could leave all of his shit at the Curtis's house until he found somewhere to stay—not that there was much of it, most of his stuff wasn't important enough to him for him to pack it up and bring it with him, seeing as a lot of it was useless junk anyway—after all Darry wouldn't mind helping him out so long as he wasn't causing any trouble.

Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly and ran it through his hair. He leaned his head back against the headrest on the seat and stared blankly up at the ceiling, examining the mold spots he could see forming. There must be a leak in the roof somewhere or something.

Once his hands stopped shaking and his legs didn't feel weak and rubbery anymore, he got out of the car and started walking again, this time with a destination in mind.

* * *

Dallas walked slowly into the vacant lot, glancing around to make sure no one else was there. He just wanted to be alone for a while, without everyone watching him and judging him and asking him questions he wasn't in the mood to answer.

Whenever there were other people around he felt like he had to act tough and unfazed by everything. He had to protect his rep, after all; he couldn't go around letting his guard down around anybody, even the gang, or else people might get the wrong idea and think that—God forbid—he was a decent human being capable of feeling hurt, or scared, or depressed, just like everyone else. Most people only saw the emotions he kept on the surface, the ones he deemed safe to show to the world—anger, hatred, bitterness.

No one ever tried to see past that, to the worry, the fear, even that tiny spark of hope he kept hidden away deep down inside himself where nobody but himself could see or feel it. Maybe nobody was looking for those kinds of emotions from him.

Maybe everyone thought he was a selfish, bitter, cold-hearted bastard.

Maybe they were right.

He sat down in the grass at the back of the lot, as far from the street as he could get. There was a building there, and he leaned back against it with a sigh. Resting his head against the wall, he closed his eyes and tried to block out the rest of the world.

It didn't work all that well.

He just couldn't stop _thinking_. What was he going to do now? Where was he going to go? Why did he even care? It wasn't like he'd ever spent much time there, two or three days a month at the very most, and it was more of a place to keep all of the shit he didn't want to lug around with him than a home, anyway.

Dallas thought about all the times he'd wished that his dad would just kick him out or something so that he wouldn't have to keep his pride intact by going back to that house even though it was the last place he wanted to be, just because his father didn't want him there and he would do just about anything to spite his father, including doing something he hated.

And he definitely hated going back there, to that house, so that his dad could scream and yell at him and throw things and punch him and shove him around like he was nothing more than something to take his frustrations out on.

When he'd thought about what it would take for his dad to finally just kick him out, he'd never pictured it being him beating the shit out of his dad. No, he'd always figured it would be him coming home drunk or escorted by the police one too many times, or one too many phone calls from the local police station about the latest Bad Shit he'd done.

Now that it had finally happened, and he wouldn't have to ever go back there again for the sole reason of preserving what pride he had left, he wasn't sure how he really felt about it. In a way he was glad, but another, smaller part of him… well, it kind of hurt, knowing that his dad honestly didn't give a fuck about him and probably wouldn't have hesitated to beat the living hell out of him.

Taking a shuddering breath, he tried not to think about anything anymore. It didn't work though. He could never seem to stop thinking when he wanted to.

He sat for hours like that, head tilted back and eyes closed, soaking up the sun's warmth. He'd probably end up with a sunburn because of that later, but at the moment he didn't care enough to move. He'd dealt with broken bones, stab wounds, just about any kind of injury you could think of—barring most of the especially gruesome or fatal ones—and he could deal with a little sunburn, too.

The events of the day eventually caught up to him, and he drifted off to sleep there, slouching up against the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him. He looked younger, peaceful, even relaxed, maybe, in sleep, like he was a little kid and hadn't been beaten up and shoved around and dragged through the muddle—metaphorically speaking—for most, if not all, of his life.

When he was sleeping, and if you didn't know him, it was easy to think that he was still a naïve, innocent kid, only seventeen years old.

Dallas Winston hadn't been innocent in a long, long time.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I'm sorry it took so long for me to post this. Things have been pretty hectic for me lately, what with school starting, practices and games for volleyball—I'm on the high school team—and everyday life. I'm still going to continue this story, but updates might be a bit more sporadic, seeing as I'm going to be extremely busy for the next couple of months.

The three OCs you meet in this chapter will _not _be major characters. I'm trying to keep the OCs I introduce to a minimum. I had to make up some guys to be in Tim's gang, though, for the purposes of this fic. I hope you don't hate them.

* * *

"Dally? What the hell are you doin' out here?" a loud voice asked from somewhere nearby.

The blond-haired boy jerked awake abruptly, grabbing his switchblade out of his pocket and rolling to his feet in one quick motion. Dropping into a fighting stance, he looked around wildly for a moment before realizing what—or rather, who—had woken him up.

Soda and Steve were both standing a few feet away, watching him with amused expressions on their faces; that was understandable, considering the fact that most people didn't jump up and ready themselves for a fight whenever someone tried to wake them up.

Embarrassed by his reaction, Dallas straightened up—he was still slouching, which didn't do him any favors considering how short he was even while standing up completely straight, but most Greasers valued their lives so nobody would mention that fact to him—and pocketed his switchblade.

"Glory, you two, give a guy some warnin', huh? I was about ready to knife ya or somethin'."

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking at the ground to hide the slight redness that was creeping up his neck and into his cheeks. Being as pale as he was, it was extremely obvious when he blushed. (Thankfully, he didn't do it too often. Hardly at all, really, since he wasn't very easy to embarrass.)

Leaning back against the dingy brick wall, he crossed his arms and asked, "What're you two even doin' here? I thought you was goin' out with those broads of yours or somethin'."

Soda looked over at Steve, a pained expression on his face. Steve didn't look back at him, but from the looks of things he was trying to dig his way to China by burning a hole in the ground with his glare. Dallas winced inwardly; obviously he'd said something wrong.

There was a short, awkward pause before, eyes trained on the ground, Steve cleared his throat and said, "Nah. We were gonna but Sandy hadta stay home." He didn't mention Evie at all. That alone was enough for Dally to piece together what was going on.

The two of them must have broken up or had a fight or something, and Soda, not wanting Steve to feel bad, had called off his date with Sandy so that he could hang out with Steve. He was just assuming, since Steve obviously didn't want to talk about whatever had happened, but judging from the looks on the other Greasers' faces, he wasn't too far off the mark.

"Oh." He looked over at Soda, who was fidgeting restlessly and watching Steve with a rather concerned look on his handsome face. Steve, either oblivious to or ignoring the look on Soda's face, was kicking at a tuft of grass near his foot, flattening it with the toe of his worn-out sneaker and then fluffing it back up again, only to repeat the action.

Feeling the need to do something to end the awkward silence that had fallen, Dally asked, "So, you guys wanna go hunt some action or somethin'? I'm bored as fuck."

"Sure," Soda shrugged. He glanced over at Steve. "You up for it?"

Steve smiled slightly at him and reached over to mess up his hair. It was an obvious attempt to pretend that nothing was wrong. "You bet I am, buddy."

Soda shot him a dark look as he smoothed his hair back into place, making sure every last strand was back where it was supposed to be. "What'd ya do that for?" he asked, pouting exaggeratedly. Steve just smirked at him and turned back to Dally.

"You got somewhere in mind, Dal?"

Dallas shrugged. "Not really. Could head over to the Dingo or somethin', I guess. What time is it?"

"Dunno. 'Round seven, seven-thirty maybe?" Soda answered, frowning faintly. "I don't remember."

Dally blinked in surprise—he hadn't thought he'd been out for that long. Actually, he didn't even remember falling asleep; his last memory was of sitting there against the wall, trying not to think about anything in particular.

"The Dingo's fine with you guys?" he asked, shaking himself away from his thoughts. Soda, followed closely by Steve, nodded. "'K then."

Dally pushed off from the wall and started walking towards the street. After he'd gone a few steps and he couldn't hear the other two following him, he turned around and asked irritably, "What're you guys waitin' for? C'mon."

He started off again, and within a couple of strides the other two Greasers had caught up to him. The three of them, walking side-by-side, crossed the lot and headed up the street in the general direction of the Dingo.

* * *

When they got there, the Dingo was already pretty busy. Cars were jammed in everywhere, taking up every parking space available, and the three of them were silently thankful that they had walked over instead of taking Steve's car.

Wandering up to the nearest car, a rusted-up old thing that looked like it belonged in a junkyard, Steve leaned against the passenger side door—it creaked ominously when he leaned his weight against it—and greeted the people on the other side of it. There were three guys inside, all of them pretty tuff-looking and all of them, if Dally was remembering correctly, members of Tim's gang.

"Hey there, Eric. How's things with the gang?" Steve drawled.

"Hey, Steve. Not too bad. We got a rumble with Brumly night after t'morrow, gonna whoop their asses," Eric replied enthusiastically, leaning out the car window to talk to Steve.

Eric Sanderson was dark-haired and lean, with a number of small scars peppering the left side of his face, and he looked to be around sixteen or seventeen years old. He was a member of Tim's gang and the third in command. He was a damn good fighter, too, and a car buff; as a result of the latter he and Steve were pretty good friends.

While Eric, Steve, and Soda were trading the latest gossip, Dally got a look at the other two guys in the car.

The one in the driver's seat, with sandy hair and a crooked nose, was Greg Michaels, Eric's best friend. Greg was a year older than Eric and at least four inches taller, but it was pretty obvious that he was the more passive one of the two. Greg was pretty quiet, didn't talk much, but underneath the gruff exterior he was a decent enough guy and could be counted on to kick some ass in a fight.

The third guy, in the backseat, wasn't as familiar to him. He was smaller and younger-looking than the others, probably only around fourteen or fifteen, but he was still pretty tuff-looking. His name was Dan Something-or-other; he couldn't for the life of him recall what the kid's last name was, only that he was a friend of Curly Shepard's and had a downright scary temper when he got riled up. Dan was one of the younger and lesser-known members, but he was a decent fighter and an alright guy to kill time with. His idea of fun was driving around the West Side slashing all the Socs' tires and messing up their paint jobs; Dally and a couple of the other guys from Tim's gang had gone with him one time, about a year ago, and ended up keying the mayor's car. Luckily, they hadn't gotten caught, or else they'd probably _still _be in the cooler.

Deciding that he didn't feel like listening to Steve, Eric, and Soda gossip like schoolgirls, Dallas walked around to the other side of the car to talk to Greg.

"'Lo there, Michaels. How ya been?"

"Pretty good, man, pretty good. You?"

"Not too bad. Been outta the cooler for two weeks now; with my luck, I'll probably be goin' back in soon," he replied, grinning.

Greg laughed. "Yeah, I heard 'bout that. Did you seriously get hauled in for stealin' a police car?" He raised a questioning eyebrow.

Dally made a face, then grinned. "Yep. Fuckin' fuzz left the door unlocked 'n everythin', and then he was all _surprised_ when it disappeared right out from under his nose." He rolled his eyes. "Musta been a newbie or somethin', cops 'round here know better'n that."

Greg snorted, nodding in agreement. "Yeah. So how was it?" He raised an eyebrow. "You run the siren? I've always wanted ta do that."

"Nope. Didn't wanna attract too much attention, if ya know what I mean." He dug his now nearly empty pack of Kools out of his pocket and lit up. "Lemme tell ya, the radios in them cop cars? They're total crap. I couldn't even find any Elvis." He made a disgusted face.

Greg laughed and started to reply, but stopped to look at someone behind Dally's back. Footsteps behind him had him turning around to see who was walking over.

He could see immediately that it was Curly, Tim's younger brother—he looked a lot like Tim, except a little shorter and stockier. His face was a little rounder, too, and his nose lacked the bump that Tim's had in it from being broken so many times, but the hair and eyes were the same, as was the way he carried himself, like a jungle cat stalking its prey.

"Hey, Winston, you seen Tim anywhere?" he asked, coming to stand next to the blond-haired Greaser.

"Nope. Why're you askin' me?"

"Well, you two're friends, aren't ya?" Curly glanced behind him, to see who all was in the car. "Hey Greg, Dan." He didn't even bother saying hi to Eric; the dark-haired hood was too deep in conversation to even notice that he was there.

"Hiya, Curly," Dan said. His voice was surprisingly deep and rough for his age and build. He slid forward in his seat so that his head was right next to Greg's shoulder and impatiently shoved a loose strand of curly brown hair behind his ears. He nodded at Curly, who nodded back.

"Either of you guys seen 'im?" Curly asked. He sounded kind of frustrated—he must have been trying to find Tim for a while if he was looking _that_ annoyed. Then again, it _was _Curly, who had no patience to speak of, so for all Dally knew they could be the very first people he'd asked.

"'K, then," the fifteen-year-old sighed. "If you see 'im, tell 'im ta crash at Buck's or somethin' tonight. Karl's gonna be home and mom's not, and he's been drinkin' pretty heavy." He sounded a little apprehensive when he said it, like he knew something really bad would happen if Tim decided to go home. If you could call a knockdown, drag-out fight 'something really bad', then he was right.

Their stepfather—Karl Etter—and Tim were always fighting about something or other, and while their mom usually stepped in before things got tooheated, there wasn't much she could do about it when she wasn't even _there_. For the most part it only turned violent (physically, anyway) when one or both of them were drunk—or if Tim was in a particularly foul mood and felt like provoking his stepfather, and that usually went hand-in-hand with the drunk thing—but since that was the case ninety percent of the time, that really wasn't saying much.

In any case, it sounded like tonight was going to be one of those nights if Tim didn't get Curly's heads-up in time or decided to ignore it.

Curly walked off, heading only God knows where—in other words, Dally didn't care enough to actually watch and see where he wandered off to—and Dally turned back to Greg.

"Karl's his dad, right?" Dallas and Tim had been friends for years, but they rarely mentioned their home lives and hardly ever talked about their families, with the exceptions of Curly and Angela. Dally heard a lot about them from Tim, probably because he needed somebody to vent to and he didn't want any of his gang members to hear him bitching about them and the latest Incredibly Stupid Things they'd done.

"Stepdad, yeah," Greg answered, nodding. "They… don't get on too well, if ya know what I mean. Always havin' these huge, screamin' fights over nothin'. I walked in on one once, nearly got my head taken off with a lamp." He grinned. "Damn, but Tim's got a seta pipes on 'im. You could hear the yellin' clear down the street."

Dally smirked; he'd had the same thing happen to him more than once when he'd dropped by to have a chat with Tim, except he'd never had a _lamp _thrown at him. Shoes, books, even one of Angela's bras on one particularly memorable occasion, but never a lamp.

Dan, who had his head shoved so far forward it looked like he was going to get his shoulders stuck between the wall and Greg's seat, added, "Yeah, Curly says the neighbors've called the fuzz on 'em a few times 'cuz they thought somebody was bein' murdered or somethin', what with all the screamin' and yellin' and cryin' goin' on."

Dan snorted, shaking his head. "I ain't never been there when step-daddy was home," he continued with a hint of relief in his voice, "but from what I've heard 'bout him I sure ain't itchin' ta be."

Greg made a face. "Me neither." He slouched further in his seat, bringing his knees up to prop them against the steering wheel. "So, how's things with Sylvia?"

Dally scowled, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Not too good. She got all pissed at me just 'cuz I forgot her birthday, won't even talk to me or nothin'." He snorted, rolling his eyes in disgust. "Bitch probably expects me to apologize or somethin'."

"Well, that ain't gonna happen," Steve said brightly, walking up behind Dally and slapping him on the shoulder. "Don't think I've _ever _heard you apologize."

"I have too," Dally grumbled.

"Yeah, OK, maybe a couple of times," Soda said teasingly, appearing—seemingly—out of nowhere on the other side of him. "But you ain't never said it to Sylvia, I don't think. She probably knows you ain't gonna say you're sorry."

Dallas shrugged. "Yeah, maybe." He looked over his shoulder, eyeing the building behind him. The big sign on the roof said 'The Dingo' but some of the letters were faded and the dot on the 'I' was gone altogether. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn't had dinner yet.

"Anybody else up for some chow? I'm starved."

* * *

Soda, Steve, and Dally—Soda and Steve on one side, Dally on the other—sat in one of the booths in the far back corner of the Dingo, working their way through enough food to feed an army. (Or the Curtis brothers, they probably ate about the same…)

"So, Dally, how'd you end up at the lot? I thought you were gonna go find some action or somethin', huh?" Soda asked around a mouthful of hamburger. Ketchup dribbled down his chin and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

"Nah. I stopped over at my dad's place first," Dallas replied shortly, taking a fistful of fries and stuffing them into his mouth. Maybe if he kept his mouth full then he wouldn't have to answer any prying questions.

"Yeah?" Steve prompted. "How'd that go?"

No such luck. He kind of wished he hadn't even mentioned his dad; he could've just made up some story about going down to one of the shops and chatting up some overly-made-up broad in a too-short skirt, but it was too late for that now.

Dally shrugged, putting more concentration into licking the salt off of his fingers than was strictly necessary. "Well, I gotta go back tonight and get all my stuff."

"What?" Soda asked, looking confused. Steve got it, though—leaning forward in his seat, he propped his elbows on the edge of the table and, looking Dally straight in the eye, asked, "He kick you out?"

"Kinda," Dally muttered, picking at the label on his Coke bottle. He took a long swig of it and then set it back down on the table. "We got in a fight."

"Oh." Steve broke his gaze and looked down at the table, clearly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going. He knew very well, from his own experiences, what 'we got in a fight' meant. 'He got pissed off and started beating on me' was more along the lines of what Dally really meant.

Soda, sensing the sudden awkwardness, chose that moment to cut in. "He gave you the boot? For good this time?"

Dally replied coldly, "I sure as hell ain't goin' back there." He slouched down in his seat, until his chin was nearly level with the edge of the table, and crossed his arms over his chest. After a moment, he nudged Soda's leg out of the way and put his feet up on the seat across from him, leaving mud streaks on the plastic from his sneakers.

"I figure I'll head on back tonight an' grab all my shit, get it 'fore he goes and gets some bright idea 'bout burnin' it or somethin'."

"He'd really do that?" Soda asked. Dally watched him fiddle with the cheap paper container the fries had come in, making tiny little rips all along the edge.

Dallas snorted. "'Course he would. Probably do a lot worse, too, if he got to thinkin' 'bout it." He met Soda's eyes and added, his voice as cold and remote as the Arctic, "You think them boys downtown are bad?" He'd never outright said it, but Dally usually lumped himself in with the downtowners, the honest-to-God hoods like Tim Shepard and his gang. "They ain't got nothin' on my old man. Most sadistic bastard I've ever _met_, and I ran with some pretty wild fuckers while I was in New York."

There was an awkward silence after that, in which no one could really think of what to say. Finally, Dally couldn't take it anymore and asked Soda, "So…how's things with Sandy?"

"Alright I guess," Soda answered, smiling and accepting the change in subject easily. "She wants me to meet her parents," he admitted with a grimace; meeting Sandy's family was _not _something he was looking forward to.

Dally smirked, leaning forward in his seat to put his elbows on the table. "See, that's why I stick with broads like Sylvia. She ain't gonna expect me to make nice with her family or bring her flowers or any of that pansy ass shit."

Steve rolled his eyes and got up out of his seat, grabbing his Coke off the table. "Whatever, Dal. You guys ready to go?"

"Yeah," Soda replied quickly, sliding out of the booth. He snatched the last couple of fries left in the greasy paper container and stuck them in his mouth, then dumped all of their trash in the garbage. Steve and Soda waited by the table while Dally knocked back the rest of his Coke in one long gulp.

He left the empty bottle on the table, and the three of them strolled out into the parking lot, squinting in the darkness while they waited for their eyes to adjust. They started walking in the direction of the Curtis's house, cutting across people's yards and through alleyways along the way. Normally most Greasers avoided the alleys after dark if they were by themselves, the risk of being jumped or mugged far too high, but seeing as there was three of them and one of them was _the _Dallas Winston, they figured they didn't have anything to worry about. Nobody was dumb enough to mess with those kinds of odds.

The trip over to Soda's house was pretty uneventful; no one tried to mug them or run them over, and only one old man came out of his house with a baseball bat, yelling threats, when they tried to cut across his front lawn.

Dally led the way into the house, nearly letting the door close in Steve's face. Shooting the lighter-haired boy a dark look, Steve followed him inside, with Soda right behind him. It looked like Pony and Darry were the only ones there—that wasn't all that surprising, since Two-Bit made a habit of getting boozed up every chance he got and Johnny _did _occasionally go home.

Darry was in the kitchen, getting himself a piece of cake when the three of them tramped inside, making enough racket to wake the dead. Pony was slouching in one of the kitchen chairs, doing his homework; judging by the ridiculously thick book, it looked like he was doing geometry.

Yuck.

Math was one of the main reasons—among others, of course, but math was one of the biggest—that Dally had dropped out of school in the sixth grade. It wasn't that he was dumb. No, far from it—Dally was actually pretty smart. He just didn't like being ordered around, getting up early enough to actually get to school before classes started, or doing homework.

He probably could've done pretty well in school if he'd applied himself, but Dally got bored easily and had always hated doing what other people told him to. He didn't get how anyone could stand sitting around in class for seven hours a day, listening to teachers drone on and doing stupid, pointless worksheets about things nobody really _needed _to know.

Dally wandered into the kitchen, vaguely aware of the fact that Steve and Soda weren't following him. Looking back, he saw that they'd flopped down on the couch and were flipping through the TV channels in search of something that was actually _interesting_.

He headed over to the counter and cut himself a big chunk of cake, then used his hands to pick it up and put it on a plate. Licking chocolate icing off of his thumb, he grabbed a fork and slid into one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

He tried to read the first page of the chapter Pony was on, but that was kind of hard since it was upside down. "I'm glad I'm not in school anymore," he muttered, grimacing. "All those confusin' numbers an' shit, I always hated math."

Pony looked up at him with a grin, "Yeah, I don't like it much either."

Darry, who was leaning against the counter eating his cake, spoke up, "I always did OK in math. Confuses the hell outta me sometimes, though." He took a big bite of cake and kept on talking. "Steve's pretty good at it, I think. Probably has ta be, workin' on those cars and everythin'."

Pony shrugged. "Yeah. Who'd have figured _Steve _would be good at math, though?" He smirked, glancing in the direction of the living room. Not for the first time, Dally wondered if Steve and Pony really _did _hate each other. They sure acted like it sometimes, getting their little digs and snide remarks in whenever they could find an opening for them.

"Not me, that's for sure," Dally said, grinning. He got up, leaving his plate—empty save for the crumbs and a small chocolate smear—on the table, and said, "I'm goin', guys. Maybe I'll head over to the lot or somethin', see if Johnny's there."

"Alright. Bye, Dally," Pony said absently, his attention already drifting back to his homework. Darry nodded goodbye as well, waving at him with the hand holding his fork.

He walked into the living room, intending on saying a quick goodbye to Soda and Steve and then heading over to the lot. He stopped dead in the doorway, however, when he saw what was going on inside.

Soda and Steve were on the couch, sitting way too close to be 'just' friends—Soda was practically in Steve's _lap_, for Pete's sake—and they were _making out_. On the Curtis's couch. Where anyone could just walk on in and see them, much like Dally had just done.

"Holy fuck!" he half-said, half-yelped, averting his eyes quickly. Hearing his shocked exclamation, the two Greasers on the couch jumped apart like they'd been burned.

"Um, Dally," Soda began shakily, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. "That—that wasn't what it looked like!" He was blushing brightly. Steve nodded quickly in agreement, running a hand through his hair, accidentally messing up the complicated swirls he'd had it styled into.

"Right," Dally said skeptically. "So you two _weren't _just sucking face on the couch?"

Both Soda and Steve shook their heads, looking away to hide the embarrassment on their faces. Dally sighed. "Look, y'all, I don't got a problem with… that. I ain't gonna, like, pound ya or nothin'."

Soda cleared his throat, still determinedly not looking in Dally's direction. "So, if we was… doin' 'that', you wouldn't, uh, mind it or nothin'?"

Dally shook his head. "Nah. It ain't like y'all are puttin' the moves on me or nothin'." He smirked. "Looks ta me like you're too busy puttin' 'em on _each other_."

Both Steve and Soda made embarrassed noises but didn't say anything, and Dally, losing interest in making fun of the two of them, glanced towards the door, saying, "I'm gonna head out, y'all. Maybe I'll see ya tomorrow or somethin'."

He strode over to the doorway and opened the door. Standing on the threshold, he turned around to give one last parting shot. "Don't go doin' nothin' I wouldn't do," he said, winking. He then waltzed out the door, letting it slam shut behind him.

Walking down the front steps and across the lawn, he rummaged through his pocket for his Kools. Pulling them out, he tapped out a cigarette and lit up. The nicotine helped to soothe his whirling thoughts.

He couldn't get that image—the one of Soda and Steve kissing, with their hands all over each other's necks and shoulders and hair—out of his head.

Damn it.

Sighing, he started down the street towards the vacant lot. He'd see if Johnny was there; if he was, then maybe he'd stick around to keep the kid company. If not, he'd probably go find somewhere that had a roof and walls. It was starting to get kind of cool at night and he didn't feel like freezing his ass off if he didn't need to.

He checked the lot quickly, glancing around in search of anyone lying on the ground. There was no one there though—maybe Johnny had actually spent the night at his house for once. Shrugging, he turned and started walking again, in a rather aimless manner because he hadn't decided where to go yet.

Now he needed somewhere to sleep; obviously he couldn't go back to the Curtis's, he refused to do that after he'd already said he was going somewhere else. Two-Bit's place was out—he wasn't in the mood for the red-haired Greaser's 'unique' sense of humor at the moment, or in the near future for that matter—and there was no way in hell Steve's old man would let him stay the night there. Hell, he hardly ever let _Steve _stay the night there, and he was actually a blood relation, so Dally didn't hold out much hope of actually being allowed to stay.

He thought that he'd probably snap and go homicidal if he had to listen to _one more_ goddamned Hank Williams song, so Buck's was out of the question, too. Well, that and Buck's patience—and hospitality—were starting to run out with him lately, what with how much he'd been staying there the last couple of weeks, but if asked he would only admit to the first reason.

That really only left one place to go. He sure hoped Tim was feeling charitable.

* * *

A/N: There's chapter four! It totally didn't turn out how I was expecting it to. With the exceptions of a few little snippets I've had written out for ages and ages, most of the stuff in this fic is whatever comes to mind while I'm writing it. I don't have much of a plan—or plot, either—but hopefully it's not _too _boring and convoluted.

Anyway, there's some more Tim/Dally interaction in the next chapter, so head's up for those of you who've been asking, "This is listed as Dally/Tim, so why the hell isn't there any Dally/Tim in this chapter?"


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Here's the long awaited (or maybe not so much awaited, but the 'long' part's definitely right) fifth chapter! My apologies for taking so long to update, editing this chapter was a bitch. I kept wanting to totally rewrite big chunks of it, lol. Anyway, thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far, I really appreciate you taking the time to do that and let me know what you think.

* * *

Tim answered the door in nothing but a pair of faded, frayed-looking jeans, his hair ungreased and his eyes still bleary from sleep. There was a new bruise on his cheek—most likely courtesy of his stepfather, seeing as it looked like Tim had either ignored Curly's warning or he'd never even gotten it in the first place—and he looked pretty out of it, standing there leaning on the doorframe for support with his eyes half-closed.

"Dally?" he asked, staring dumbly at the blond-haired boy slouching in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. After a moment he snapped out of it and growled, "Do you have _any fuckin' idea_ what time it is?" He stepped out of the way so he wasn't blocking the doorway anymore.

When Dally didn't come right on in, he asked tiredly, "What're ya waitin' for, huh? You ain't no girl, I ain't gonna carry ya across the fuckin' threshold." Dally just glared at him. "What, you want an engraved invitation?" he snapped.

"Somethin' like that," Dally retorted sarcastically, stepping inside. "Mind if I crash on your couch?"

"Yeah, actually, I do." Before Dally could get all offended, he added, "Karl would throw a hissy fit if he saw some weirdo sleepin' on _his _couch." There was more than a little bitterness in his voice. "C'mon up to my room, you can sleep on the floor. If you're real lucky I'll even give ya a blanket," he said, like a blanket was some sort of precious commodity.

Then again, when it came to sleeping on hard, cold wooden floors…

Tim closed the door and headed for the stairs, cutting across the tiny living room. Dally followed him blindly, occasionally stumbling over something in the dark—somehow he managed to run into the end of the couch, the coffee table, _and _the armchair next to it—and swearing under his breath while clutching at whichever limb he'd managed to bash that time.

Tim didn't run into anything, despite still being half-asleep—having lived there his entire life, he knew his way around the house in the dark just as well as he did with the lights on.

They crept up the stairs to the second floor, wincing every time the floorboards creaked underfoot. Tim led Dally into his room and shut the door quietly. Nobody slammed doors in their house at night—it was too risky, what with the fact that Karl was a fairly light sleeper and downright _hated _being woken up, especially by his wife's 'bratty, snot-nosed kids'. Besides, he'd already had one fistfight with his stepdad that night, and he wasn't in the mood for another one, especially with Dally there to witness it.

Grabbing one of the ratty old blankets off the bed, Tim tossed it to Dally, then lay back down on his bed and huddled under the covers.

Dally rolled himself up in the blanket he'd been given and stretched out on the floor next to the bed. He laid down on his side and tucked an arm underneath his head to use as a pillow, since Tim only had one and he wasn't about to give it to Dally.

He shifted restlessly, trying to make himself more comfortable, but Tim's floor wasn't exactly soft, and the heads of the nails in the floorboards were digging into him mercilessly. He flipped onto his back and stared up at the ceiling with tired eyes. Normally he slept on his stomach, but he didn't have a pillow and he didn't really feel like smushing his face up against Tim's floor and whatever might be on it. He probably didn't clean it very much…

After a few minutes of listening to Dally shifting around on the floor and making frustrated noises, Tim sighed heavily and said, "Just get up here already."

"What?"

Tim rolled his eyes, even though Dally couldn't see the action in the darkness. "Get up here so you'll stop movin' around! You're keepin' me up," he said exasperatedly, sitting up to look down at the floor where Dally was cocooned in the blanket he'd been given. "Glory, Dal, it's getting' real irritatin'."

Dally grunted but didn't say anything. Then, after a moment, he pushed himself up off the floor and crawled onto the bed; the springs in the mattress protested loudly at the extra weight. Dally flopped facedown at the very edge of the bed, and Tim rolled as far as he could in the other direction, until he hit the wall.

There was a long moment of silence before Dally muttered, "Thanks, Tim."

"Yep," Tim yawned. "Don't worry 'bout it, man. Why aren't ya at the Curtis's or Buck's, though?"

Dally shrugged, and Tim could feel the gesture even though he couldn't see it. "Steve snores real loud and I can't sleep listenin' to that racket," he lied, yawning. The part about Steve's snoring was true—there were times when Dally had considered smothering him in his sleep just to get some peace and quiet—but that wasn't the real reason he hadn't wanted to stay. It would've been awkward, to say the least, for him to stay the night there after what he'd walked in on Steve and Soda doing, and on top of that he hadn't wanted to come back in after already saying he was going to find somewhere else to sleep—his pride wouldn't let him.

"Oh." Tim rolled over onto his side, wrapping an arm around his pillow. "You know you do too, right?"

"Do what?" Dally yawned, pulling the blanket up a little higher so that it covered his shoulders and neck, leaving only his head exposed.

"Snore."

"No I don't," Dally denied a little more loudly than he'd intended. Seeing Tim's disbelieving look, he repeated in a slightly quieter voice, "I don't!"

"Yeah, you do. Like a goddamn train," Tim retorted flatly.

"You're lyin'."

"Watch who you're callin' a liar, Blondie. You're sleepin' in _my _house on _my _bed." There was no reply. Huh. That was strange; usually being called Blondie started Dallas in on a pissed-off tirade, which more likely than not would include copious use of the despised nickname 'Timmy', which in turn would set _Tim _off and before long they'd be bitching each other out like there was no tomorrow.

"Dally?"

Still no answer.

"Dally." Tim reached over and poked at the smaller boy, trying to see if he was still awake. The white-blond lump on the other side of the bed started to snore softly—he'd already fallen asleep.

Rolling his eyes—a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Dally muttered something rude about how they'd get stuck like that if he didn't stop rolling his eyes so much—Tim took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Distantly, he wondered why it didn't seem strange to have another guy sleeping in his bed with him. He'd expected it to be at least a little bit awkward, but it really wasn't, at least not to him. If he was being entirely truthful, he really didn't mind the thought of sharing a bed with Dally.

That wasn't right though, was it? Guys were _supposed_ to mind sharing a bed with another guy. Sighing tiredly, he rubbed at his eyes. He was too tired to be thinking about something like that. Frowning faintly, he blanked his mind and allowed himself to finally drift off to sleep.

* * *

The next morning, Tim woke up and rolled out of bed. Or tried to, anyway—about halfway he ran into a warm, snoring lump sprawled out on the mattress beside him. Both of them fell off the bed with a loud thump, landing in a cussing, flailing heap on the floor.

Struggling to his feet, Dally snapped, "What the fuck, Tim! That fuckin' hurt!"

"No? Really?" Tim retorted sarcastically, rubbing his knee where he'd banged it against the floor. Grabbing onto the edge of his bed, he pulled himself up and piled the blankets, which lay in a tangled mess on the floor, back on top of the mattress.

Checking the clock—it was around eight-thirty—Tim sighed and turned to Dally, who was standing near the door with an irritated look on his face. "I'm gonna go take a shower," he grumbled, rubbing his face tiredly. "Don't break nothin' and stay outta my stuff. I think there's food in the kitchen. No promises though… you can look if you want."

Without another word, he stalked out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom. Dally watched him go with a bemused expression—he'd practically just been given free run of the house, something he didn't remember ever having before.

Shrugging and mumbling something about not looking gift horses in the mouth, he wandered downstairs and into the kitchen.

He made a beeline for the fridge, hoping that the Shepards had something halfway edible in there. Yanking the door open, he leaned over to peer inside, biting his lip as he surveyed the options. Beer, mold-ridden cheese, something thick and sludgy-looking in a leftovers container.

Gross.

Pulling a face, he grabbed a beer and kicked the door shut. Suddenly he wasn't feeling so hungry anymore.

Ambling his way over to the table, he sat down and put his feet up, rocking his chair back on two legs. He took a long swig of beer, relishing the slight burn he felt as it went down his throat, and took a moment to look around.

Everything was pretty much the same as he remembered it, except for the recently added fist-shaped hole in the wall over by the sink—courtesy of yet another fight—and the new coffee maker. (They'd probably broken the other one in one of their legendary Shepard family 'disagreements'. It was a damn good thing they'd gotten another one; Dally shuddered to think what any of the Shepard siblings would be like without their required two cups, minimum, of coffee every morning. Now, Dallas was a bit of a coffee fan himself—only if there was sugar in it, though, he couldn't stand it plain—but even he wasn't _that_ bad.)

Quickly losing interest in the room—Dallas Winston was not the kind of person that could sit around critiquing people's décor for any longer than a few seconds at a time, if he felt the urge to do so at all—he got up to look through the cupboards. He seriously doubted that there would be anything edible in any of them, but it couldn't hurt to have a look. Even if he didn't find anything, it would relieve his boredom… for a couple of minutes, at least.

He wandered around the kitchen, opening up the cupboards and looking on all of the shelves. There wasn't a whole lot to look at, really, except for the decomposing rat carcass he found in one of the ground-floor cupboards. That was actually kind of cool to look at, even if it was pretty gross and totally put him off of eating anything at Tim's house in the near future.

Abandoning all thoughts of finding something halfway decent to eat, Dally strolled into the living room and flopped down onto the couch. Wriggling around until he found a comfortable position, he folded an arm underneath his head and closed his eyes. He must have drifted off to sleep again, because the next thing he knew he was being shaken awake none-too-gently.

"C'mon, Dally, get your lazy ass up," Tim grumbled, giving him a shove. "Go take a shower, you reek, man."

"Fuck you. I smell just fine," Dally growled irritably. He hated being woken up, and Tim's less-than-complimentary comments weren't improving his mood any.

"Curly didn't shower for a whole month one time and he still smelled better than you do right now," Tim retorted, walking into the kitchen. "You eat yet, Blondie?" he called out, hoping to get a rise out of Dally. It worked.

"Don't fucking call me that," Dally snapped at him. "'Course I ain't ate yet. Most of the shit in the fridge looks like it'd give me food poisonin' or somethin'. Didja know there's a dead rat in one of your cupboards? It's all rotted and everythin'," he continued conversationally, wandering into the room after Tim and hopping up to sit on the table. It creaked ominously but held up under his weight, thankfully.

Tim, who was busy getting the coffee maker working, looked over at him. "I'll have Curly clean it up when he gets home," he said, smirking. That was one of the bonuses of being an older brother—anything he didn't want to do, he could foist off on Curly or Angela and they could bitch and whine all they wanted but he still had seniority—and the ability to kick their asses if they got too mouthy with him—so they generally did whatever he told them to.

"I'm sure he'll just _love _that," Dally said sarcastically, grinning.

"Yep. So, you want somethin'? I could make oatmeal or somethin', I think there's still some left…" Tim said, trailing off until he was so quiet he was practically mumbling. He walked over to the stove and opened up the cupboard on the left of it, taking out a box that more than likely contained oatmeal mix.

"Sure," Dally said, shrugging. "Make it for me, wouldja? I'mma hit the shower." He jumped down off the table and waltzed out of the room before Tim could make a rude comment about him finally realizing just how bad he stank.

* * *

While Dally was in the shower scrubbing three days worth of grime off of himself, Tim was making breakfast. Or trying to, at least. He might have been one of the most respected and feared hoods on the East Side, but he couldn't cook worth shit.

Turning off the burner, he grabbed the pot by the handle. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to use an oven mitt so that his hand wouldn't get burned by the hot metal. Tim yanked his hand back quickly, swearing a blue streak and cradling his hand to his chest with a pained expression.

"Damn it," Tim hissed through gritted teeth, glaring daggers at the innocent-looking pot still sitting on the stove. 'Why can't food be as easy to make as coffee?' he thought irritably, glancing over at the half-full mug of black coffee sitting on the table.

Of course Dally, with his usual perfect timing, chose that moment to wander back into the kitchen, still rubbing a towel through his hair to get the excess water out. He hated having wet hair—something about the way it dripped on his shoulders and ran down the back of his neck irritated him to no end—and always tried to dry it as much as possible after taking a shower.

Taking in the scene before him, Dally snorted loudly and exclaimed sarcastically, "Glory, Tim, you're a regular homemaker, aren't ya?"

He tossed the damp towel on the floor and walked over to the stove, shoving Tim out of the way. Grabbing one of the oven mitts—they were hanging from hooks above the stove, right in plain view—Dally slid it on and grabbed hold of the pot.

Dallas carried it over to the table and set it down, then looked over at Tim with a look that clearly said 'Hah! In your face, Shepard!' Putting the oven mitt back where he'd found it, he turned to Tim and said smugly, "And _that _is how you pick up a pot without burning yourself. Any questions, class?"

"Yeah, I got one. How come you're so ugly?" Tim asked innocently, getting bowls and spoons out of one of the cupboards. He dumped them unceremoniously on the table and headed over to the fridge in search of something to drink that wasn't coffee. He'd already had two and a half mugs of it and he figured he'd better switch to something else before he overdosed on caffeine and had to be rushed to the emergency room. He could live quite happily without ever experiencing that level of complete and utter humiliation.

"You must be blind or somethin'," Dally snorted, dropping down into the seat at the table that his half-empty beer was sitting in front of. "I'm way better-lookin' then you."

"You wish, Winston," Tim snorted, glancing around in the fridge. Shoving the beer cans out of the way, he grabbed the orange juice jug sitting behind them, at the very back where he'd hidden it. Orange juice disappeared pretty damn quick in their house, so if he bought some he usually hid it away where no one else would find it; nobody ever looked behind the beer cans, so he figured it was safe there. There was only a little bit left at the bottom, so he didn't bother with getting a cup, just drank it straight out of the jug.

Padding back over to the table, Tim slumped down into a chair across from Dally and snatched up the remaining bowl. Dally had already scraped over half the pot into the other one and was shoveling it in like it was going to disappear if he didn't eat it fast enough. He'd apparently already forgotten about the whole rat carcass thing.

Tim cocked an eyebrow smugly. "I must not be _that_ bad of a cook."

Dally looked up from his food, smirking. "Nah, it tastes like shit. I'm starvin' though, I'd probably eat cardboard right about now."

Tim glared at him. "Fuck you, dickhead, it tastes just fine." Looking down into his bowl, he scrunched up his nose. It was grayer than he thought it was supposed to be and kind of lumpy-looking, too.

Sucking up his courage, Tim took a bite. He pulled a disgusted face—Dally hadn't been lying, it actually was pretty bad. He kept on eating it anyway. There was nothing else in the house to eat, and besides, if Dally could suffer through his cooking, then he couldn't pussy out or else he'd never hear the end of it.

After they'd finished eating Tim's pathetic attempt at breakfast, they dumped all of their dishes in the sink—Tim would get Curly or Angela to wash them later, he sure as hell wasn't going to do them himself—and went into the living room to crash on the couch and watch some TV.

Flipping through the channels, Tim sighed loudly. Like usual, there was nothing good on. Eventually he just put it on a cartoon channel—that was better than the news or something, at least. He read the morning paper occasionally—mostly just to see if his or any of his gang members' names were in there under the police report section—but the news kind of bored him. Who really cared what was going on on the other side of the country, or the world for that matter? If it didn't affect him in some way, then he really didn't give a damn what all was going on in some foreign country halfway across the world.

Slouching low, he propped his feet up on the edge of the coffee table. It would leave scuffmarks, but honestly, who really gave a damn? It wasn't like anybody that would see them would care.

The two of them sat there for close to an hour, watching cartoons—"Why the fuck are we even watchin' this shit?" "…I dunno. 'Cuz there ain't nothin' better to do?"—and talking about anything they could think of. When they started in arguing about what kind of cigarette was better, Kools or Lucky Strikes, though, they knew they were running out of stuff to talk about.

"Where're Curly and Angela, anyway? I ain't seen 'em yet," Dally said, glancing at Tim, who shrugged.

"Hell if I know. School, I guess." He scratched the back of his neck, frowning. "I ain't got a clue where they're at mosta the time."

There was silence for a few minutes, save for the noises coming from the TV as a bunch of cartoon characters danced around to some stupid kid's song.

"I'm gonna head out, have a second breakfast maybe. Wanna come?" Dally finally asked, looking over at Tim, who was sprawled out watching Mickey Mouse with a glazed look in his eyes. He looked bored out of his mind.

"Sure," Tim replied, jumping at the chance to actually go _do _something. Pushing himself up into a sitting position—or at least a sitting position that wasn't so slouchy—he rubbed a hand across his face and yawned. "Let's go 'fore these damn cartoons put me to sleep."

"Yeah," Dally mumbled in agreement, using the arm of the couch to pull himself to his feet. "I'm startin' ta feel kinda groggy."

"Groggy? You been talkin' with Baby Curtis again?" Tim drawled, cocking an eyebrow.

"Fuck you, Shepard. I _did _go ta school for a few years, y'know. I ain't dumb."

"Didn't ya drop out in the sixth grade?" Tim retorted, looking amused. "At least I made it to tenth."

"Yeah, by havin' your buddies do your homework for ya," Dally said coolly. That wasn't entirely true—Tim had actually done most of his homework on his own, except for his English. He'd had to have Ricky—his second-in-command and one of the few guys in his gang that actually did well in school—help him with that, not that he would ever admit it to anyone, especially Dally.

Pushing himself up off of the couch with a muted groan, Tim switched off the TV and went to find his shoes. Dally, standing by the door, watched in amusement as he wandered through all of the downstairs rooms in search of his shoes.

"You seriously can't even find your _shoes_?" Dally snorted. Tim, who had just gotten down on his knees to look underneath all the furniture, replied rather defensively, "At least _I've _never forgot my own broad's _name_."

"That only happened _once_!" Dally snapped back. Tim just rolled his eyes and went back to looking for his missing shoes.

Rooting around underneath the couch, he pulled out something scuffed, grass-stained, and vaguely shoe-shaped and held it up triumphantly. "Found one!" he said, shoving his foot into it and lacing it up quickly. Dally bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing—the image of Tim on his knees, digging under the furniture was damned funny.

He walked over to the door and opened it, glancing outside.

Aside from a couple of Greaser guys driving by in a rusty old car that looked like it belonged in the junkyard—the same as a lot of cars on the East Side looked—the streets were pretty much empty. Heaving a bored sigh, he slumped down on the front steps and pulled out a cigarette, intent on having a smoke while he waited for Tim.

Tim appeared in the doorway a couple of minutes later, both feet now with shoes on them, and slammed the front door hard enough to rattle the glass window in the top half of it. "Get your lazy ass up," Tim commanded shortly, heading for the street where his car—a beat-up old Mustang with a big crack spidered across the passenger's side of the windshield—was parked.

Dally rolled his eyes and put his cigarette out against the steps, then got up to follow him.

* * *

The parking lot of the coffee shop that they pulled into was pretty busy, which was kind of surprising considering how many of its usual patrons were either in school, at work, or still at home sleeping off their hangovers.

Snagging a booth towards the back of the room, they entertained themselves by loosening all of the lids on the salt and pepper shakers until one of the waitresses, a haggard-looking woman with frizzy bleached blonde hair, came to take their order. She seemed to be in something of a rush, stalking over to their booth on her high heels and eyeing them coolly as she dug her note pad and a pencil out of her apron pocket.

"Chocolate chip pancakes—three of 'em—and coffee, four sugars," Dally demanded before she could even ask them what they wanted. Looking irritated, the woman scribbled his order down on her note pad and turned to Tim.

"Whatcha want, hun?" she asked, snapping her gum loudly.

"French toast and bacon," he said curtly. "And make it snappy, huh? I'm starvin'."

Glowering at him, the waitress said coldly, "I'll let the cooks know," and walked away without another word. Absently, Tim wondered if she was that rude to everyone, or if they'd just caught her in a bad mood. If she was that bitchy to _all_ of the customers, he couldn't even begin to guess why she hadn't been fired yet.

Cocking an eyebrow, Dally said dryly, "She's a real polite one, huh?"

"Oh yeah," Tim snorted. "Real nice girl, very friendly. Probably 'cuz we're so respectable-lookin' and all," he added sarcastically, shooting a contemptuous glance at her back as she rounded the counter and walked into the kitchen.

There was silence for a long moment before Tim spoke up. "So, four sugars, huh? I never woulda pegged you for havin' a sweet tooth, Winston."

Dally scowled at him, folding his arms across his chest threateningly. "Shut your trap, Tim, I ain't the only one."

He was referring to the stash of chocolate that Tim kept hidden away in his closet, along with all of his dirty magazines and his alcohol; he'd only found out about it because he'd been over at Tim's one time and they'd been drinking, and he'd caught sight of it when the two of them were standing there in front of his closet arguing over which booze bottle to open up next.

Their food arrived a little while later, long after Tim would have deemed it 'snappy'. The waitress—her nametag said Betsy—set their plates down with a little more force than necessary, and put Dally's coffee down so hard she nearly spilled it all over the table. She stalked away again without saying anything.

Dally watched her go with a half-amused, half-irritated expression on his face. "Great service 'round here," he muttered into his coffee mug, taking a long sip of the steaming liquid.

"Yep," Tim muttered back around a mouthful of French toast.

The two of them ate their second breakfast quickly, practically inhaling it. Dally finished first, and sat there eyeing Tim's bacon and making less-than-subtle remarks about still being hungry until Tim finally just snapped and threw a couple of pieces in his general direction. Smirking, Dally tore into them enthusiastically; Tim watched with raised eyebrows as he finished them off and began inching his hand across the table towards Tim's plate.

Brandishing his butter knife threateningly, Tim warned him, "Keep your hands offa my bacon, Winston."

Dally blinked innocently at him. "I have no clue what you're talkin' 'bout, Shepard."

Tim rolled his eyes—again!—and said, "Whatever, Dally."

* * *

A/N: Don't worry, the slash _will _be coming within the next couple of chapters or so!

Chapter six might take a little longer in coming. School starts in a couple of days, so I'm going to be insanely busy for a little while here, and I'm not sure how much time I'm gonna have to work on it in the next couple of weeks here. Sorry, folks.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: I am a horrible, horrible person, promising you guys a quick update and then taking forever to actually _do _it. I have no excuse for why this took so long, except for having to juggle school, volleyball practice, and more homework than should be allowed.

Anyway, thanks to all of my reviewers. I'm totally loving the feedback.

Yeah, a part of this isn't in Dally's POV—he's there, but things kind of follow Steve and Soda for a little while. It's only for a small part of the chapter, though, and Dally still features in it. No worries, though, I'm not going to be making a habit of switching POVs on you. I just couldn't seem to write that scene from Dally's end of things, it kept coming out all garbled up…

Anyway, on to the story!

* * *

Dally wandered aimlessly down the street, kicking absent-mindedly at any rocks he could find littering the pavement. He was deep in thought, wearing a fierce scowl on his face that had people passing by eyeing him nervously and suddenly deciding that they'd rather walk on the _other_ side of the street. He'd been told before that his 'thinking face' looked more pissed-off than thoughtful, so it didn't really surprise him that nobody wanted to get too close to him.

The subject of his thoughts didn't do anything to help the dark expression on his face, either. Dally couldn't stop thinking about Tim, as strange as that sounded. There wasn't anything particularly memorable that Tim had done, nothing that would justify the amount of thinking Dally had been doing about him.

No, what Dallas was thinking about was along more mundane lines—the way Tim's hair curled slightly around his ears where he'd missed greasing a few strands, the way Tim smiled, crookedly and with it hardly ever really reaching his eyes, the slight bump in the bridge of Tim's nose where it had been broken a couple of years previously in a fight.

Why was he thinking about things like that? It didn't make any sense. Guys didn't think about other guys like that; guys didn't _notice_ things like that about other guys. They just didn't.

So why was he noticing things like that about Tim? As much as he hated to admit it, it reminded him of the way he would look at the girls he picked up at Buck's, or the drive-in, the way he would look them up and down and linger on certain parts of the female anatomy. That was exactly what he did to Tim.

…If he didn't know better, he'd say he was _attracted _to Tim.

But he couldn't be, could he? Tim was just a friend to him, nothing more. Even if he _did _have really nice dark blue eyes and a long, lean body.

Oh god. Who the hell was he trying to kid? He _was _attracted to Tim. But that _couldn't _be right; Dally wasn't into guys. He'd never so much as glanced at another man. So what the hell was wrong with him, that he couldn't seem to keep his mind—or his eyes—off of Tim Shepard?

Shaking his head, Dally tried (and failed) to think about something else. He needed something to get his mind off of Tim. Maybe a nice stiff drink (or three) would help him with that.

* * *

Buck's was, not surprisingly, pretty busy; there were a number of cars parked outside, and a bunch of guys were crowded around in the parking lot watching a fight between a drunken Brumly boy and Andy Dellson, one of the hoods from Tim's gang.

Dally spared the fight a glance on his way to the door; there wasn't really much to see, though, since Dellson had just clocked the Brumly guy full in the face and knocked him back into a parked car with more than enough force to have him down for the count.

A couple of Brumlys rushed forward to drag the stunned boy away, swearing something fierce the entire time. They obviously weren't too happy about the way the fight had gone; maybe there'd been money riding on it or something. They sure wouldn't be so pissed off just because one of their guys got the shit kicked out of him in a fair fight—that happened all the time, it certainly wasn't anything to get worked up over. Shooting the three Brumlys a disdainful look, Dally strode past them and went inside.

Buck's was as crowded and as smoky as ever inside, and some crappy country song blared from the jukebox. Grimacing in disgust—Hank Williams deserved to go to the _special _hell for all the torture he'd put Dally through over the years, having to listen to that shit every time he walked in the goddamn door—Dally wound his way expertly through the crowd towards the bar.

All of the barstools were full, but a pointed look towards some guy—he didn't know him by sight, so it couldn't have been anybody very important—at the end of the bar had an empty seat turning up real fast for him.

Sliding onto it, he leaned forward on his elbows and flagged down the bartender. It was a different one this time, a blonde girl—she couldn't've been a day over nineteen—wearing about a pound and an half of make-up, and she sashayed her way over to him with a flirty smile pasted on her face.

"Hey there doll, what can I getcha?" she drawled, leaning up against the bar in a blatant attempt to look tuff and maybe not-so-coincidentally giving him a perfect view down her shirt. Dally eyed her for a moment before deciding that a little flirting couldn't hurt—after all, he'd come here to get his mind off of Tim, and what better way to do it than to get 'friendly' with a willing broad?

Smiling wolfishly, he looked her squarely in the eyes and drawled, "A whiskey'd be real nice right about now, sweetheart."

Smirking at him, the girl said, "Comin' right up, hon," and flounced off into the kitchen that was behind the bar. She returned a moment later with a bottle in hand and held it out to him. Absently, he noted that she was wearing fake nails, painted fire engine red.

Accepting the bottle, he took a long swig and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, relishing the burn the alcohol left as it went down his throat.

"You got a name?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

The blonde girl smiled smoothly—her teeth were pearly-white and uniformly straight—and replied, "Maria Sandez. And you are?"

"Dallas Winston," he answered, taking another swig. He didn't miss the slight widening of her eyes when he said his name; she obviously realized who he was and what he was capable of. "You can call me Dally," he added, and watched with amusement as her eyes lit up. He could almost hear what she was thinking—now wouldn't _that_ be something to tell her friends, that she'd slept with _the _Dallas Winston?

He barely kept himself from laughing aloud—if she thought she was going to get anything more than a one-night stand or two out of this, she was sadly mistaken. She'd be lucky if he even remembered her name the next morning. She was pretty enough, but not what he wanted.

And wasn't that pathetic? Here he was, with a beautiful woman practically _drooling _over him, and all he could think of was Tim? Maybe a good fuck would change that. It couldn't hurt to try, at least, right?

Going in for the kill, he asked, "So when's your shift over?"

He gave her a significant look, cocking an eyebrow and looking in the direction of the stairs. There were rooms up there that Buck rented out to his partygoers, the ones that needed a place to crash for the night or even just somewhere to screw. He was planning on the latter—sticking around afterwards would bring him nothing but trouble.

Returning the look with equal force, Maria pressed up against the bar—practically shoving her breasts right in his face—and replied, "Another half hour. You gonna stick around, stud?"

Dally nodded, getting up from his stool. "You can count on it," he drawled, smirking slyly at her before disappearing back into the crowd.

An hour and a half later, Dallas stumbled out of Buck's front door drunker than he'd ever been before, with his pants unbuttoned and a trail of hickeys going all the way up his neck. He just barely reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street before he was on his knees, puking his guts out all over somebody's front lawn.

* * *

Steve Randle was not a morning person in _any_ sense of the word. Which was why he protested so loudly when someone shook him awake at three in the morning, swearing under their breathe the whole time.

Groaning, he snapped, "What is it? If nothin's on fire and nobody's dyin', I'm goin' back to sleep." He looked blearily at the person who'd woken him up and sighed. Soda was looking down at him with an expression on his face that could only be described as…well, OK, he looked like he could be feeling any number of things, but if he was waking Steve upat such an ungodly hour, it had to be important. Soda knew how much he hated being woken up.

"C'mon, buddy, you gotta get offa the couch," Soda half-ordered, half-pleaded, grabbing his arms and trying to haul him up into something resembling a sitting position.

"Why?" he snapped, slapping Soda's hands away irritably. "'M fine right here."

"Cuz Dally needs it," a second voice chimed in from somewhere behind him. Steve looked over at the speaker, who turned out to be Two-Bit. He scowled at the rusty-haired Greaser.

"Screw Dally," he mumbled, starting to lie back down.

"OK, one," Two-Bit began, "I'm sure you'd like to but this isn't really the time to talk about your strange, twisted fantasies, and two, have a heart, man. He's sick as a dog and you'll feel awful guilty about it in the mornin' if you make him sleep on the floor."

Steve shot him a bleary glare, but allowed Soda to drag him off the couch and dump him in the armchair next to it. Two-Bit walked over to the couch, moving slowly, and Steve tracked his progress across the room with tired eyes. It wasn't until Two-Bit reached the far end of the couch that he noticed the person slumped against Two-Bit, clutching his shoulder for support, which was a testament to how out of it he was that he hadn't even realized there was someone else there.

It was Dally, looking pretty roughed-up and paler than Steve had ever seen him, which was saying a lot considering the fact that Dally was practically an albino in the first place. If his eyes had been pinkish red instead of blue, Steve would've thought he _was_ one. The only actual color in his face—besides white—came from the small patches of feverish red on his cheeks and the pinkness of his lips, which were reddened and swollen from, as far as he could tell, making out with someone.

Two-Bit eased Dally down onto the couch, propping him up against one of the arms, and glanced over at Soda, who was busy trying to get Dally's sneakers off so he could lie down.

"Y'think I should get him a bucket or somethin'?" Two-Bit asked, eyeing the sick expression on Dally's face. "He ain't lookin' too good…"

"Yeah, might be a good idea," Soda replied, reaching over to pull Dally's arms out of his jacket sleeves so he could get it off, "he looks like he's about to hurl."

While Soda was busy stripping Dally of his jacket, shoes, and socks, Steve watched sullenly—he was still irritated about being woken up—as Two-Bit wandered into the kitchen in search of something for Dally to puke in. There were rattling noises, a loud crash, and muffled cursing, and a minute later Two-Bit strode back in, mixing bowl in hand, with a huge red mark on his forehead.

"You gotta stop puttin' all those damn pots 'n pans on the top shelf," he said to Soda, rubbing his forehead ruefully and grinning. "I damn near brained myself!"

"And wouldn't _that _be a tragedy," Steve muttered sarcastically.

Ignoring Steve's comment, Two-Bit walked over to the couch and put the bowl down on the floor. He was just in time, too—the second he set it down next to Dally's head, the blond rolled over and retched violently into it, puking up what looked like everything he'd eaten in the last week.

Wrinkling his nose in disgust, Steve got to his feet and pointed in the direction of the kitchen. "I'm gonna go sleep in there," he said, shooting Dally a sickened look. Just _hearing _Dally puke was starting to make _him _feel like _he _was going to upchuck, too. He left the room without another word.

Soda glanced at the couch, where Dally was stretched out on top of the blanket and pillow Steve had been using. Sighing, he went to go find another spare pillow and blanket. That kitchen floor was going to be mighty uncomfortable otherwise.

Walking into the kitchen, he went over to Steve's prone form—he was lying flat on his back on the floor between the table and the doorway, with his arms folded behind his head—and dropped the stuff in his arms on the floor next to the dark-haired seventeen-year-old. "Here ya go, Stevie-boy."

"Thanks," Steve mumbled, making no move to actually get up and make himself a bed out of the stuff Soda had brought him. Rolling his eyes with an affectionate smile, Soda grabbed the blanket, unfolded it, and draped it over the dark-haired Greaser's body. Lifting Steve's head as gently as he could, he slid the pillow underneath and straightened back up.

Impulsively, he leaned down and smoothed Steve's hair back. Steve's eyes opened slowly, looking up at him with an unreadable expression on his face. Reaching up, he grasped the back of Soda's neck and pulled him in for a quick, light kiss. He pulled away after a moment and murmured gruffly, "'Night, Soda."

"'Night, Steve," Soda replied, trying his hardest to keep his voice even. He didn't want to weird Steve out by getting all sappy and girly on him, and besides that he felt stupid getting all mushy over something as small as a goodnight kiss. They hadn't even made out, it was just a brush of the lips, so it wasn't like it was anything to get too excited over, anyway.

He needn't have worried about it; a rumbling snore alerted him to the fact that Steve had fallen asleep without even hearing Soda's reply.

Soda stood and, with a goofy smile on his face, started back towards the living room to check on Dally. He didn't trust Two-Bit's sympathy towards Dally's plight enough to leave the two of them alone together for any length of time; God knows what Two-Bit would do with the chance to tease Dally mercilessly without the danger of having his head beaten in.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

The next morning wasn't any better.

Darry made breakfast—which consisted of eggs, toast, and the chocolate cake out of the freezer, the one that Soda had made the evening before when he'd realized that there was no more cake in the house—while Steve snored away on the kitchen floor, blissfully unaware of the commotion only feet away from him.

Two-Bit, on the other hand, having decided the night before that someone had to stick around to 'watch over' Dally, was conked out on the floor in front of the TV, drooling on the carpet. If Johnny would've showed up sometime during the night—he didn't, thankfully; if he had that would've meant his parents had been beating on him or yelling at him again—the whole gang would've been there.

Soda stumbled down the stairs around seven-thirty, clothed only from the waist-down, and made a beeline for the fridge. He looked tired, with his hair mussed up and bags under his eyes from lack of sleep. He'd been up quite a bit of the night trying to make sure Dally didn't drown in his own puke…or something like that, anyway. Was it possible to drown in your own puke?

Trying to block that disturbing question out of his mind, Soda, grabbing the milk, poured himself a big glass and mixed in some chocolate syrup.

Taking a sip, he ambled into the living room to check on Dally again. The blond-haired boy was still passed out on the couch, snoring loudly. He still looked a little pale, with patches of redness on his cheeks, but not nearly as bad as he had the night before, when he'd been looking like death warmed over.

Soda glanced into the mixing bowl sitting on the coffee table—it had been moved sometime in the night, after Dally had gotten past the puking-his-guts-up stage—and wrinkled his nose in disgust. It looked like Dallas had upchucked everything he'd eaten in the last _month _into that bowl.

Deciding that he would leave Darry the oh-so-fun task of washing _that _up, he rested the back of his hand against Dally's forehead to check for a fever, brushing wild, slightly curly tufts of white-blond hair out of the way to do so.

Dallas stirred fitfully at the contact, making a protesting noise in the back of his throat. He was warm to the touch.

Frowning, Soda padded back into the kitchen—stepping over a still-asleep Steve in the process—and went upstairs to the bathroom. He hunted through the medicine cabinet for a thermometer and, finding one buried at the very back, grabbed a wash cloth from the shelf and went back downstairs.

Wetting the cloth in the sink, he cupped a hand under it to keep it from trailing water all across the floor and carried the still-dripping cloth into the living room. Sitting on the arm of the couch, he stuck the thermometer under Dally's tongue and prayed that he wouldn't wake up in the next couple of minutes. Dally was definitely the kind of guy that would bite down if he felt something in his mouth when he woke up, and breaking a glass thermometer in your mouth was _not good_ for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that the stuff inside said thermometer was probably toxic.

Brushing back Dally's sweaty hair, he wiped his face and neck with the washcloth, trying to cool him down a little bit. It didn't help much, but it was something to do while he waited.

After about a minute, he pulled the thermometer out from between Dally's slack lips and examined it. 99.2 degrees—so he had a slight fever, then. Luckily, it looked like only a minor one.

Sighing, Soda got up to go re-wet the washcloth. He finally got an entire week off from work, and here he was spending a chunk of it taking care of a sick friend.

* * *

Dallas woke slowly, eyelids inching open slowly and then slamming shut again under the sudden onslaught of light. He made a noise of protest, turning his face slightly so that it was buried in the couch cushion. Everything was so _bright_.

Groaning, he lifted a hand and rubbed at his face. His head was pounding mercilessly—it kind of felt like someone was beating on the inside of his skull with a baseball bat, or possibly a pick-ax, whichever would hurt more—and everything was slightly blurred, even in the darkness under his eyelids.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, he hauled himself up into something closely resembling a sitting position and put his head in his hands, waiting for everything to stop spinning.

Taking slow, even breaths, Dally slowly uncurled from his hunched-over position and sat there for a couple of minutes with his hands resting on his knees. Moving hurt like hell; even with his head screaming in agony, he could still feel the twinges of pain as his battered body protested his movements.

He kind of wanted to just lie back down and sleep for a week, but his bladder said otherwise. Gingerly, grabbing onto the back of the couch for assistance, he stood.

After a pause to make sure he wasn't going to keel over or have his legs give out on him or something, he slowly started to make his way into the kitchen on unsteady legs. Seeing a pillow and a crumpled-up blanket lying abandoned on the floor, he frowned in confusion but kept walking. Slowly but surely, he made his way up the stairs in the direction of the bathroom.

Once he'd taken care of business, he turned the shower on and stripped out of his clothes. Pulling his shirt off, he happened to glance in the mirror and froze.

Slowly, he reached up to finger the bruises trailing up his neck all the way to his jawline. The night before came crashing back to him, and he sat down abruptly on the edge of the tub, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his fists in his lap.

He remembered everything; how he'd been so freaked out by the realization that he had the hots for Tim that he'd gone down to Buck's and gotten completely hammered; how he'd slept with that blonde girl he'd met at the bar, Maria What's-her-name, and how he couldn't stop thinking about Tim even while he fucking her into the mattress; how he'd tried stumbling home (to the Curtis's house) in the dark and nearly been run over by a car. How Two-Bit had found him nearly passed out on somebody's front lawn and half-carried, half-walked him over to the Curtis's, where they'd dumped him on the couch and watched him puke his guts out.

He could feel a flush creeping up his neck into his face; he felt humiliated, pathetic. Breathing harshly, he brought his hands up to scrub at his face.

Running one of his hands through his hair, he pushed himself to his feet and stepped into the shower, half-considering drowning himself in the half-inch of water that had collected at the bottom of the tub and saving Tim the trouble of murdering him if he ever found out that Dally liked him in _that way_.

Suicide wasn't really his style, though; if he died, he at least wanted to go out with a bang. Something he'd be remembered for. Drowning himself in the shower just couldn't compare to dying in a blaze of messy glory, maybe something big enough for him to be on the front page of the newspaper. That would actually be kind of cool… well, except that he couldn't really enjoy all the attention his death would attract if he was, you know, dead.

He showered quickly, not wanting to linger since the water was cooling down more and more by the second even though his hands were nowhere near the temperature knobs. When it finally went completely cold he turned the water off and hopped out of the shower. Well, not so much "hopped" as "stepped slowly and carefully"—he felt like he'd been run over by a truck.

Snatching a towel off of the nearby shelf, he dried off and dressed, taking his time. After he was washed up and fully clothed, he opened up the medicine cabinet and rummaged through it for painkillers—his head felt like it was about to explode.

Finding what he was looking for, he palmed the small Tylenol bottle and headed back down to the kitchen without bothering to shave, leaving a big water puddle next to the shower and a wet towel on the floor in his wake.

Wrestling with the childproof cap on the bottle, he padded into the kitchen and eased himself down into one of the chairs that was pulled out from the table.

Heaving a sigh—which sure didn't do anything to help his aching ribs—he popped a handful of Tylenol into his mouth and took a swallow of water to chase them down, grimacing. He hated taking painkillers—it was way too easy to get addicted to random shit out of the medicine cabinet, he'd seen too much of it out on the streets and he never wanted to get to where the highlight of his day was popping a few pills—unless it was absolutely necessary. He classified 'necessary' as 'it feels like my brain's about to start bleeding'.

Putting the now-empty glass of water down, he rubbed his temples with his fingertips in the vain hopes of alleviating the pain somewhat. After a couple of minutes of just sitting there, virtually motionless, he started to feel restless. Getting to his feet carefully—his legs still felt like they were a little wobbly—he made his way back to the couch and slumped down onto it.

Slowly, he rearranged himself so that he was lying down with his head on the pillow and pulled the blanket back over himself. Or tried to, at least. He only got it about halfway up his torso before he gave up.

Yawning, he relaxed into the couch cushions and allowed himself to drift off to sleep, exhausted by his short walk around the house and still feeling vaguely hung-over.

* * *

Dally awoke a few hours later to the sound of the door slamming. Jerking upright, he looked around wildly for the source of the noise. When he realized that it was just Ponyboy coming home from track practice, he made a disgruntled noise and flopped back down, pulling the pillow over his head.

He'd just started to fall asleep again when the door slammed a second time. "Goddamn it," he snapped, throwing the pillow aside, "Don't anybody know how to _not _slam doors in this house?"

"Sorry, Dal," Steve said, kicking his shoes off. His tone of voice made it pretty obvious that he was no such thing. "I wake you up, Sleeping Beauty?"

Dally just growled menacingly in reply. Deciding that antagonizing Dally anymore would be detrimental to his health, Steve shut up and walked into the kitchen. Dally glared after him and sat up on the couch. There wasn't much point in trying to go back to sleep—the rest of the gang would all be there soon, and with all the noise they made there was no way he'd be able to sleep through it.

Getting up, he stalked into the kitchen and grabbed the milk carton out of the fridge. It was almost empty, so he just took the whole thing to the table and slumped down into one of the kitchen chairs.

Ponyboy was at the stove, getting dinner ready. It smelled like spaghetti. Steve had hopped up onto the counter and was working his way through a huge slice of chocolate cake. Absently, Dally wondered how he could eat so much sugar in one day and not get sick. Steve had once eaten seven candy bars on a dare—he hadn't even gotten sick. Soda, on the other hand, had been ready to puke after four. It had been kind of funny, watching Soda eating chocolate with a sick expression on his face, like he was being forced to eat something horrible and disgusting.

Finally noticing that there was someone that should've been present that wasn't, Dallas asked, "Where's Soda at?" Usually the middle Curtis brother was either at work, with Steve or Sandy, or at home. Obviously he wasn't at work or home, or with Steve, either.

"He took Sandy out for dinner," Pony answered, not looking up from the pot of spaghetti sauce he was meticulously stirring. "Said he wanted to do somethin' special, what with it bein' Sandy's birthday tomorrow and all."

"Oh. Right." Dally felt like a bit of an ass—here Soda was, taking his girl out for dinner to celebrate her birthday, and Dally hadn't even _remembered _Sylvia's. 'She knows not to expect anything from me,' he thought to himself, biting his lip. 'She knows I'm not the kind of guy that brings girls flowers and writes them poetry and buys expensive shit for them for no reason,' he told himself firmly. 'I don't gotta spoil her like that to keep her around.'

Heaving a sigh, he decided to go down to the store the next day and buy her something nice to make it up to her. Maybe a new pair of earrings would get her to let him off easy with the whole 'apologizing' thing.

* * *

A/N: I'm so, so sorry about the long wait. I'll try to update faster next time.

What did you think of this chapter? Was Soda out of character? Was Dallas? Did you like the different viewpoint or not? Should I stick with writing solely from Dal's POV? Am I asking way too many questions?


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: No, you're not imagining it. There is a real, actual, honest-to-God update. I'll bet a few of you are gaping in shock right now—an update?! Finally? Hallelujah, it's a miracle!

Anyway, a big thank you goes out to everyone for the awesome reviews! You guys totally made my day(s). Once again, I apologize for the ridiculously long wait. This'll be the last chapter before December—I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year, so for all of November and most likely a little while afterward I won't be doing much writing on this, but don't worry. I won't be abandoning it.

* * *

Dally wandered down the isle, glancing around at all of the stuff on the shelves. He heaved a sigh; he was shopping for something for Sylvia, but so far it had turned out to be a lot harder than he'd first thought it would be. Originally, he'd planned on just going in, grabbing something randomly off one of the shelves, and buying whatever it turned out to be.

That plan had been ruined, though, when he'd somehow managed to snag a pair of socks—and men'ssocks at that—on his first try. Somehow he didn't think Sylvia would be too impressed by them, even though they were something he'd actually gone out and _bought _for her, unlike just about everything else he'd ever given her. (Which, to be entirely honest, wasn't much.)

Sylvia was probably one of those girls with expensive taste—and how fucked up was that, that the two of them had been dating for months already and he didn't even know _that _about her?

She _was_ from the East Side, so expensive taste or not, she wasn't going to expect anything very pricey. West Siders—being the spoiled, privileged jackasses that they were—always talked about how Greaser girls were all cheap sluts and would screw just about anybody for a buck, but the truth was that being anything _besides _cheap pretty much guaranteed you'd be disappointed if you were a girl on Tulsa's East Side. Greaser guys just didn't have the money to go around buying their girlfriends expensive gifts.

He was pretty damn sure she wouldn't appreciate a pair of socks, though. He'd seen some girls—the lucky ones, the ones with boyfriends that actually had cash (although they probably hadn't gotten it through anything resembling legal means)—turn down fucking _jewelry _before just because it wasn't shiny-and-jewel-encrusted enough for their tastes.

Sighing loudly, he started towards the counter. He'd just get her a bracelet or something. All girls liked jewelry, right? And if she _didn't_ like it for some unfathomable reason, he could always find some other girl to give it to…maybe Maria, from what he remembered of her the night before—which, to be honest, wasn't a whole lot, since he'd managed to get pretty soused between the time he got there and he time he met up with her again after she got off shift—she'd been a pretty good lay.

He was so lost in thought about who he'd give Sylvia's gift to if she rejected it that he didn't even notice the big cardboard display at the end of the isle until he walked right into it, sending the entire thing—as well as himself—crashing to the floor in a very loud, spectacular manner.

Cussing loudly—and quite colorfully—he scrambled to his feet and, blushing so badly it felt like his face was on fire, ran a hand through his hair (partly in an attempt to get it to lie flat again, and partly trying to look casual). He walked quickly out of the store, trying to look like he _hadn't _just completely humiliated himself, and in public no less.

It wasn't until he was halfway down the street—glancing over his shoulder constantly to make sure the shopkeeper guy hadn't come to the doorway to yell at him about the huge mess he'd just made in there—that he remembered that he still hadn't bought Sylvia anything.

Shit.

Well, there was no way in hell he was going back in _there_. He would have to go somewhere else…

Suddenly, it clicked. He took off down the street at a fast walk, deftly avoiding the people all around him on the sidewalk. (And why was it that out on the street he could do that, but in a store he went around running into everything under the sun?)

A car horn honked as he cut across the street, right through a busy intersection, and he flicked the guy off without even looking to see who it was. He heard tires screeching behind him as someone slammed on the brakes to keep from rear-ending somebody that had slowed down to let him by, but he didn't look back. Dallas Winston was on a mission, and nothing came between him and what he was after, whether it was booze, money, or a gift for his soon-to-be_-non_-ex-girlfriend.

* * *

Dally stepped forward and thrust the small box into her hands before backing up a half-step, eyes trained on the ground as he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. Sylvia shot him a half-curious, half-skeptical look, and took the lid off, glancing inside.

Almost instantly, her expression went from stony and distant to pleasantly surprised—or rather, pleasantly shocked, since she hadn't actually thought there would be something shiny and expensive _in _the box unless the shininess involved cheap wrapping paper. Dally didn't doubt that she'd figured, when he'd first handed it to her, that he was either trying to mess with her head or so desperate for sex that he was willing to sink to rather pathetic—in his mind, anyway—lengths to get her back.

Well, OK, the second part was kind of true, but no one except Dally had to know that.

Slowly, she pulled a gold bracelet, studded with diamonds—fake ones, obviously, but they weren't _too _tacky and even looked semi-real—out of the box and held it up in front of her face, examining it closely.

She looked over at Dally, smiling brightly. (So brightly, in fact, that he was momentarily reminded of a car's oncoming headlights right before said car tried to run you over. He figured that would be a good simile (whatever the hell simile meant; it had been a few years since he'd taken an English class, he was pretty sure he knew what one was but he wasn't positive) since anything that had Sylvia looking so happy was bound to be a bad thing for him. Except for the totally awesome make-up sex they would most likely be having some time in the near future as a result of Sylvia's happiness…. and truthfully, it was almost worth all the trouble he'd gone to to get her back—Sylvia could be a real she-devil when she wanted to, and he always _had_ preferred the more fiery ones.)

"Happy late birthday," he muttered, looking down at his shoes.

Making an extremely high-pitched girly sound—the kind of thing that would have dogs all over the neighborhood turning their heads, thinking they'd heard a dog whistle or something—Sylvia threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. "Oh, Dal, it's gorgeous!" she exclaimed, beaming.

Dally grinned weakly at her, resisting the urge to gag at the over-the-top enthusiasm in her voice as she wrapped herself even more closely around him and squeezed, tighter and tighter, not unlike a boa constrictor. Absently, he wondered if it was a bad sign when you started comparing your girlfriend—he assumed they were back on again, anyway—to a cold-blooded reptile.

He kind of thought it was.

* * *

It had been a week—seven long, torturous days—since he'd given Sylvia his amazingly out-of-character suck-up present, and Dally was already regretting it.

Sure, the make-up sex had been pretty damn good, but she'd been parading that bracelet around like it was made of solid gold, and you'd think it was the way she talked about it all the time in a loud voice and showed it off to all of the broads she was friends with.

For another thing, she was being so clingy that it was really starting to irritate him, following him everywhere and scaring off anybody he tried to talk to while she was with him. It was getting to where no one even bothered coming up to him if they saw that Sylvia was with him.

And last but _definitely _not least, she seemed to think that just because he'd bought her _one present_, it was going to be happening on a regular basis. He'd always thought she knew the score, not expecting things from him that a lot of other girls took for granted—presents, lovey-dovey mush talk, going on dates that required the guy to actually_ pay for it_—but now that seemed to have flown right out the window.

The day before she'd even gone so far as to ask him if he wanted to meet her parents. His words to Soda_—"See, that's why I stick with broads like Sylvia. She ain't gonna expect me to make nice with her family or bring her flowers or any of that pansy ass shit"_—had been ringing in his head as he quickly made up an excuse to leave, and he hadn't given her an answer.

He was kind of starting to wish that he were single again. Sex wasn't worth all the trouble he was going to, no matter _how _good it was.

* * *

Sylvia pulled the door open and stepped inside, smoothing down her bleached-blonde hair where the wind outside had messed it up a little bit. Looking around in search of Dally, it took her several minutes—the main room at Buck's place could hardly be called "huge", but it wasn't tiny, either—before she finally spotted a head of wild white-blond hair at a table towards the back of the room.

Smiling, she made a beeline for it.

When Dally saw her pushing her way through the crowd towards him, he groaned and put his head in his hands, narrowly avoiding bashing his forehead on the beer bottle sitting in front of him. He was pretty sick of her by that point, and every time he saw her now he couldn't suppress a frustrated groan. It was like she was _stalking _him or something.

He was pretty sure it wasn't normal to consider your girlfriend a stalker. Especially when it was _you _that was the stalk-ee…

His decidedly un-boyfriend-ish thoughts were interrupted when Sylvia slid into the seat next to him with a big smile on her face and a Virginia Slim dangling from her fingers. "Hi, Dal," she said, taking a short drag on her cigarette. "Fancy seein' you here," she continued, still smiling that shark-like smile and edging closer and closer to him until she was practically in his lap. She stubbed her cigarette out on the tabletop and fished a stick of gum out of her pocket, popping it into her mouth.

Dally fought the urge to puke all over the floor. Her fake, cheesy smile was making him sick.

"Hey, Sylvia," he muttered, finding the label on his beer extremely interesting all of a sudden. Any excuse not to look at her…she was pretty, there was no question about that, but that smile was seriously starting to irritate him. He wasn't sure what exactly he would do if he had to sit there and listen to her yak and smile that stupid smile for much longer, but he knew one thing. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be pretty.

Standing up abruptly, he said, "I'm gonna go get a beer." He didn't offer to get her one—as far as he was concerned, he'd been buying her _more _than enoughlately. He strode away from the table quickly, heading for the bar.

He felt a strong urge to cry when he heard her get up and follow him. But, of course, he was Dallas Winston, and Dallas Winston never cried, even when he was on the verge of committing frustration-induced homicide in a public area out of desperate need for some 'alone time'.

He weaved his way through the crowd over to the bar, where he sunk down onto one of the available bar stools. Sylvia slid onto the one next to him and latched onto his arm possessively, smacking her gum loudly in his ear.

He lasted about five seconds before he just couldn't take it anymore.

"Look, Syl," he sighed, prying himself away from her arm and turning to face her. "It ain't that I don't like you. Shoot, I do. But you gotta stop it with the whole… clingy thing. Ya dig?"

"Yeah, I dig," she said frostily, crossing her arms slowly, the complete opposite of the smiling, overly-friendly girl she'd been only a moment before. Dally mentally winced—arm-crossing was _not _a good sign. "So, you want me to leave you alone, to stop 'bothering' you? Is that what you want?" Her tone of voice made it abundantly clear that 'Of course not, sweetheart, I want you glued to my side 24/7' was the only acceptable answer (although maybe not in those exact words…).

"Kinda, yeah," Dally replied, shrugging. He'd already pissed her off anyway, so why not dig himself a little deeper? "No offense, doll, but you get a little irritatin' after a while."

Sylvia stared at him in shock for a long moment—you could practically _see _her thinking, 'Oh my god. Did he _seriously _just say that?'—before replying. When she did, her voice was cold enough to freeze boiling water. "Well, if I'm so _irritatin'_, then I guess I'll just go find somebody else to _irritate_. Here, take your goddamn ring. It's ugly anyway."

She pulled Dally's ring—the one he'd rolled a drunken senior for—off of her finger and threw it at him. It bounced off of his shoulder and disappeared under a nearby table, and while he was occupied with trying to find it, she stormed out of the room.

Looking at her retreating figure, he muttered, "Damn it. She's still wearin' the bracelet."

* * *

Tim was startled awake by a loud thump, followed by muffled swearing. It wasn't too tuff to be asleep at home at nine o'clock on a Friday night, but he hadn't really felt like going anywhere. He'd been tired and feeling a little sick for most of the day, and while normally that wouldn't stop him from going out and having some fun, he just wasn't in the mood to go anywhere.

He looked around the living room, but there was no one there. A second thump came a moment later, and he sighed resignedly. Rolling off of the couch, he stalked over to the door and yanked it open, putting on his most intimidating glare. Interestingly enough, it was the same one he used on all of the little kids in their cheesy costumes that came trick-or-treating on Halloween. (It was something like a Shepard family tradition to scare the shit out of all the little trick-or-treaters that came to their house every year. Some big brothers took their kid brothers and/or sisters out to tramp around the neighborhood and fill their candy buckets—Tim had always made a point of refusing to subject himself to that level of torture, but he made up for it by helping Curly and Angela scare the other kids into dropping their candy buckets and running away like the devil was after them. The Shepard siblings had always ended up with more candy than if they'd actually gone around to all the houses in the neighborhood, and with half the work, too.)

A certain blond-haired juvenile delinquent was on the other side of the door, foot poised to kick the door again in lieu of knocking.

"Fuckin' took ya long enough," he said impatiently, totally ignoring the pissy look on Tim's face and pushing past him to walk inside. He strolled over to the couch and dropped down onto it, smack dab in the middle. He then proceeded to kick off his shoes and prop his feet up on the coffee table, much to Tim's disgust.

Nudging the door shut with his elbow, Tim stalked back over to the couch and shoved Dally over to the side so he had room to sit down. "Christ, Winston, walk right in like ya fuckin' own the place," he grumbled, slouching down in his seat.

Dally rolled his eyes. "Whatcha gonna do about it?" he drawled in his most bored tone, deliberately not looking over at the older boy. "Throw me out?" He leaned his head back, stretching. His shirt rode up a little bit, and Tim watched the motion, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight before him, as a scant inch of pale skin, peppered with hair so light you could barely see it, was revealed to him.

Swallowing, Tim glanced up guiltily at Dally's face to see if the blond had noticed him looking. Luckily for Tim, Dally seemed to be totally unaware of all the attention he was getting. Dally kind of seemed like the type that would bash his face in for being a 'fag' if he ever found out about Tim's 'interest' (read: obsession).

Getting to his feet, Tim headed for the stairs. He stopped at the bottom of them and turned to look back at Dally, who had made no motions to get up and follow him.

"You comin' or what?" he asked irritably, jerking his head in the general direction of his room. "My step-dad'll be home soon. Trust me, you don't want him seein' you lookin' all at home here. He don't like seein' _me _lookin' all at home here, and I'm his bitch's _kid_."

Dally got up slowly and crammed his feet back into his sneakers. Then he started towards Tim, walking at a slow, ambling gait, in no hurry to catch up. "I'm comin', I'm comin', keep your panties on," he sneered.

Tim snorted. "You're the only one here wearin' panties," he shot back, smirking.

Dally threw him a disgusted look. "Keep dreamin', Timmy."

"Don't fuckin' call me Timmy!" he snapped. He wasn't really that mad about it though—for most people, calling him Timmy was cause enough to earn them a punch in the face, but coming from Dally, who'd gone around calling him that for as long as he could remember _because _he knew it pissed Tim off, somehow it wasn't quite so bad. Then again, turnabout was fair play—maybe he didn't mind it so much when it was Dallas butchering his name like that because he could do the same thing right back just by saying something about the other boy's height or hair color.

Secretly, he thought that 'Shorty' was just as bad as 'Timmy', and 'Blondie' wasn't much better.

While Tim was lost in thought, Dallas took the opportunity to shoulder his way past Tim to lead the way up the stairs. Tim gave only token protests—it was worth it to let Dally feel like he was in charge (and, in Tim's mind, he definitely _wasn't_) if it meant he could stare at his ass all the way up the stairs without a chance of getting caught at it.

"What the hell're ya doin' here, anyway, Winston?" Tim asked, realizing that up until that point he hadn't even questioned the other boy's presence. "Don't you gotta go make nice with Sylvia?"

He couldn't see Dally's face, but he was pretty sure he was grimacing. "Nah. Just broke up with her."

Tim stopped abruptly. "Hold up. You're tellin' me _you _broke up with _her_? _You _broke up with the only goddamn girl I've ever seen you like enough to go and _spend money on_? You feelin' OK? Not sick or dyin' or nothin'?" He grabbed Dally by the arm to stop him, got up on his tiptoes, and pressed the back of his hand against the tow-headed boy's forehead.

Dally batted his hand away, making a face. "I'm feelin' just fine," he growled. "She was just fuckin' smothering me, y'know? Gettin' all clingy and whiny and shit. I hate that in a broad."

He started walking again, and Tim followed suit, his eyes locked on a certain part of the other boy's anatomy that was practically right in his face. He started to run his tongue over his lips, but managed to stop himself mid-lick when he realized what he was doing. He drew his tongue back into his mouth hastily, biting down on it for good measure. There would be no more lip-licking taking place, at least not while he was staring at another guy's _ass, _for God's sakes.

They reached the upstairs landing with no further incidents, and Tim brushed past Dally to lead the way to his room. Dally had been there before, more than once, but he didn't trust the younger boy to remember which room was his after having been in it only a couple of times, and having been drunk on most of those occasions, too.

Tim shouldered the door open and headed over to his bed, walking on top of the clothes littering the floor. They were all dirty already anyway, and he wasn't wearing shoes, so he didn't see any problem with that. Speaking of shoes—

"Take those damn things off," he ordered, pointing at Dally's sneaker-clad feet. He had no clue what might be on the bottoms of Dally's shoes, but he wasn't taking any chances. "I don't give a fuck where you leave 'em, just get 'em off."

"Whatever, Tim," Dally snorted, rolling his eyes, but he complied without a fight. Sans shoes, he wandered over to Tim's bed and belly-flopped down onto it. He stretched his legs out, letting his feet hang over the edge of the small bed, and folded his arms, resting his chin on them.

Tim thought momentarily about doing the same thing, but decided that there really wasn't enough room on his small bed for both of them to stretch out. Instead, he hopped onto the bed and slid back until his back hit the wall. Wriggling around, he made himself comfortable. The two of them sat like that in relative silence for a long moment before Dally finally gave in and started talking.

"So what were you doin' home all by your lonesome on a Friday night?" he drawled, raising an eyebrow. "It ain't like you to be a wet blanket."

"Aw, shut up," Tim grumbled. "Wasn't feelin' too hot earlier is all." That wasn't entirely true—he definitely wasn't feeling very good, but a large part of why he'd wanted to just bum around at home was that he didn't feel like dealing with crowds and people and _noise_. He was like that sometimes. When he got sick of being crowded and irritated and driven half-crazy by stupid people doing stupid things, he'd find somewhere quiet and kick back for a while. This time it happened to be his house.

"Uh huh," Dally said disbelievingly, closing his eyes and tilting his head to the side. "Since when've ya ever let a little thing like 'not feelin' too hot' keep ya from havin' any fun?"

"Dally, you wouldn't know 'fun' if it bit ya in the ass," Tim retorted lazily, leaning his head back against the wall. "'Sides, who ever said stayin' home for once ain't any fun? I got the whole place to myself tonight."

Dally rolled his eyes. "Yeah, 'cuz sittin' at home, all by your lonesome, is _so _much fun. Who needs booze and broads and fights when you can _stay home and watch TV_," he said sarcastically.

"Y'know, I'm suddenly not feelin' so charitable anymore. You can get goin' any time now, Winston," Tim said, shooting him an irritated look.

"Fine, fine, whatever," Dally grumbled. "I'll shut up." He shifted onto his side and lifted his hips up, digging his matches out of his pocket, then groped around in his jacket pockets until he found his pack of smokes. Pulling them out, he lit one up and stuck it between his lips.

"Open up the window, wouldja?" he asked Tim, taking a deep drag and exhaling the smoke. Tim did so, before grabbing his own cigarettes off of his dresser.

"Gimme a light," Tim demanded, holding out his Kool.

"You forgot to say please," Dallas taunted him lightly, smirking, but he did it anyway, using the end of his cigarette to light the other one.

"Don't be stupid, Winston. I never say please."

Dally cracked a smile at that; it was pretty much true. He couldn't ever remember hearing Tim say the word please in anything but a mocking way.

The two of them sat in silence for a little while, smoking and determinedly ignoring each others' presence, but eventually they got bored of that. Tim broke out a deck of cards and a bottle of vodka, and they played poker, using cigarettes and pocket change as betting fodder.

Around midnight Curly came home, roaring drunk as usual—if there was one thing about his kid brother that Tim was proud of, it was his ability to drink just about anybody clear under the table—and stumbled up the stairs, nearly doing a face plant at the top when he kept on climbing even after the floor evened out. Dally had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from bursting out laughing when Curly saw them watching and waved, smiling widely in a manner that made it painfully obvious he was completely hammered. It was a bit of a strange sight—Dally wasn't used to seeing any of the Shepards smiling, even when they were in a _good _mood (which they hardly ever were).

Angela came strolling in an hour or so later, dressed to the nines and with about five pounds of makeup on her face, clearly having just gotten back from a date. Dally eyed her short skirt and clingy top, wondering if she went around like that all the time. He doubted it—there was no way any school would even let her through the front door dressed the way she was. She looked like a fifty-cent hooker, the kind you'd find working the street corners in clothes that revealed even more skin than they covered.

She walked right past the open door without even glancing in their direction and went straight to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. A moment later, Dally heard the water start running. Maybe she was trying to get all that gunk off her face; he hoped so, she looked prettier without all that junk making her look like she was a raccoon or something. Normally he was a fan of girls wearing make up, but in Angela's case she really didn't need it.

Shaking his head, he turned his attention back to Tim. The black-haired Greaser was chewing his bottom lip thoughtfully, eyes trained on his cards. After a long moment, he tossed them down on the bed.

"Three of a kind. Whattaya got, Winston?"

* * *

Tim woke slowly, squinting against the sunlight assaulting his eyes through the still-open window. Yawning widely, he pressed himself a little more snugly against the warm body in front of him, tightening his grip on the other person. Idly, still half asleep and not really registering just _who _was lying there in front of him, he began stroking at the soft skin of their hip, the only thing he could reach without moving his hand more than an inch.

Then his hand slid a little higher, and came into contact with a toned abdomen. One definitely _not _belonging to anything on the female side of the human spectrum. He yanked his hand back in shock, eyes flying open rapidly.

Huh. Strangely, he was shocked, but not disgusted. Vaguely, he wondered why he wasn't completely weirded out by having _cuddled _with another guy. He figured it _should_ bother him or something, maybe disgust him, but it really didn't, just like catching himself staring at Dally's ass or stomach the night before hadn't freaked him out even though it totally should have.

Dally fidgeted in his sleep, frowning darkly and mumbling threateningly under his breath. "Leave my popcorn alone, bitch…"

Tim ducked his head hastily and buried his face in his pillow to muffle the laughter he could feel bubbling up his throat. Who the hell _dreamed _aboutsomeone stealing their _popcorn_? Admittedly, he'd had some pretty weird dreams in his time—he still got involuntary shivers every time he thought about the clown one he'd had when he was eight—but even those hadn't been as strange as Dally's was, by the sounds of it.

He pulled his arm back from where it had been resting on Dally's hip and pushed himself away a little so that he could sit up. Dally, semi-conscious now—roused somewhat by Tim's laughter at his expense—but still pretty out of it, made a protesting sound low in his throat and pressed himself back against Tim's chest, pinning him between the wall and Dally's back.

Tim froze, shocked by the sudden movement. Dally usually slept like a rock; he hadn't thought the small noises and movements he'd made would wake the smaller boy up. Dally made a soft sort of huffing sound and turned his head a little bit, mashing his face into the pillow.

After a few long, agonizing minutes, he started to snore again. Tim breathed a sigh of relief. Then, cautiously, slowly—like, seriously slow, any slower and he probably would've been going _backwards_—he leaned his head forward and pressed his forehead against the back of Dally's neck, careful of the still-healing cuts all over the back of his neck and head.

Sighing quietly, he tightened his grip on the other boy a little bit and shut his eyes, trying to get back to sleep.

* * *

A/N: There's chapter seven! Please let me know what you think of this—reviews are my life-blood!

No, seriously, let me know. I'm always open to suggestions.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: OK, seriously, there's no excuse for taking so long with this. I had some computer issues--the new one didn't want to receive documents from the old one, so I had to figure out a different way to transfer all of my writing--but truthfully, I just haven't really been in the mood for writing anything lately, and I really had to struggle to get this finished. Finish it I did, though, and I made it extra-long too as a peace offering. (Please don't kill me?)

* * *

When Tim woke up the second time, he was half-squashed underneath a certain limp, sleep-pliant body. He just lay there for a little while, too lazy to make any real movements, but before long the restlessness got to be too much for him.

Carefully, Tim maneuvered himself out from under Dally—who, miraculously, didn't wake up, even when Tim slid out from under his arm and it thumped down onto the bed—and struggled into a sitting position, with his back against the headboard.

Feeling the urge to have a quick smoke, he leaned across Dally's sleeping form and grabbed the (by this point more than a little squashed) pack of Kools lying on the nightstand. They were Dally's, but he doubted the other boy would miss one or two…

Sliding one from the rapidly emptying pack, Tim grabbed his jacket from its usual spot—hanging on the bedpost—and dug his matchbook out of the right-hand pocket. He lit up, then stretched out on the bed and opened the window so he could tap the ashes off the end of his cigarette without them getting all over in his sheets.

Releasing a sigh, he glanced over at Dally's sleeping form. The tow-headed boy looked deceptively angelic when he was sleeping, lips slack and features relaxed, skin pale and smooth. Tim noted with no small amount of surprise that Dally's face lost its dangerous edge when he wasn't making a conscious effort to look mean--if Tim didn't know better, he'd think that Dally was innocent, still a kid. Good thing he _did_ know better. Dally hated being underestimated by people, and he hated being called a 'kid' even more.

God, it felt so surreal to be sharing a bed with _Dallas Winston _of all people. If he could've picked who he fell for, it sure as hell wouldn't have been Dally. He was cocky, argumentative, and a total asshole, not to mention the fact that he was a guy.

But, a tiny voice whispered in the back of his mind, _he's gorgeous, isn't he? Sex on legs, with that blond hair he refuses to grease and those perfect blue eyes. And he's tough and he makes you laugh and he's about as close as you're ever gonna get to finding somebody that can actually __**understand **__what kind of shit's going on in your head._

Alright, so maybe his subconscious could've found someone worse to be attracted to than Dally. There was _no fucking way _he was in love with him, though. No, none at all. It was just lust, animal magnetism or some shit like that.

There was no way he was in love with Dallas Winston. No fucking way.

* * *

When Tim finally got sick of sitting around (and _not_ watching Dally sleep, because that would be just plain pathetic and definitely not the kind of thing a tough hood would even consider doing) and smoking his way through Dally's last pack of Kools, he headed downstairs. Thankfully, it looked like both his mom and step-dad had left for work already. They'd left their dirty breakfast dishes in the sink, and the keys to his step-dad's truck, which were usually left on the counter by the fridge, were gone.

Shrugging to himself, he padded over to the fridge and rummaged through it in search of something edible. He was so engrossed in his search for something to eat that he didn't even hear the steps creaking as someone came downstairs.

"Mornin', Tim," Curly muttered as he walked into the room, eyes still at half-mast like he was fighting off the strong urge to go back to bed and sleep for a few more hours. He slumped down into one of the kitchen chairs and laid his head on the table with a groan.

"Christ, my head hurts," he moaned into the wooden surface, voice a little hoarse.

Tim snorted. "I'd be shocked if it didn't, with the way you were actin' last night. You were fuckin' soused," he replied, shaking his head. To be honest, he was surprised Curly was awake at all; his kid brother was not a morning person (which was the one thing, besides their hair, that all of the Shepards seemed to have in common) and even when he wasn't trying to sleep off a massive hangover he usually slept in as late as he could on the weekends. It was a rare thing to see Curly up before noon on a Saturday or Sunday.

"Yeah. Me and Pete and Alex had a drinkin' contest. I won," Curly replied, a trace of smugness in his voice as he got to his feet and made himself a bowl of Cheerios. Instead of using milk, though, he poured orange juice into the bowl with the cereal. "They're a coupla pansies."

"_You're _a pansy."

"'Least I don't stay home on a Friday night." He said it like it was some sort of unforgivable crime.

"'Least I ain't dumb enough to go anywhere when I'm sick," Tim shot back, taking a long swig from his beer can. "Unlike _somebody_ I know." He sent Curly a pointed look.

Curly scowled into his cereal bowl, jabbing at the soggy mess with his spoon. "It was one time," he grumbled, "and I was hardly even _sick _when I left."

"Yeah, well you were sure as fuck sick when you came home."

"Whatever, Tim," Curly grumbled, getting up and dumping the remains of his breakfast in the trash. Leaving his bowl and spoon in the sink, he stalked out of the room. (Not _too _heavily or loudly, though—he still had a killer hangover.)

Not even eighty feet away, Dally woke up to an empty room. Still half-asleep, he rolled out of bed and grabbed his cigarettes off the bedside table. Shaking the pack, he was momentarily confused to not hear anything sliding around inside. Then it dawned on him; looking inside, he saw that it was empty. Swearing, he muttered, "That bastard oughta get his own fuckin' cancer sticks…"

Jamming his feet into his sneakers, he stepped out into the hallway and went downstairs quickly. Hearing someone banging around in the kitchen, he walked as quietly as possible over to the front door and slipped outside. Shutting it softly behind himself, he started off down the sidewalk. His stomach growled loudly, reminding him forcefully that food was, indeed, required to live. Grimacing, he started off in search of somewhere to get breakfast, preferably a breakfast he wouldn't have to pay for. (Translation: anywhere where he could get away with stealing whatever he ordered.)

* * *

It wasn't until later on that morning that Tim managed to find Dally. He'd been looking for him for a couple of hours already by that point, but--and wasn't that how it always seemed to happen?--it wasn't until he gave up that he actually found him. He'd been wandering down the alleyway between Spencer's Discount and a seedy-looking bar (although that wasn't saying much, since _every_ bar on the North Side was pretty seedy-looking) when he happened upon the shorter boy leaning against the wall, having a smoke. Where he got the cigarette from Tim had no clue--he'd used up the rest of Dally's pack earlier that morning, before the blond boy woke up--but, knowing Dallas, he'd probably jumped some poor kid and stole his smokes. Dally glanced up when he heard footsteps approaching, but when he realized who it was he averted his gaze and took another drag on his cigarette.

Narrowing his eyes, Tim walked up to him. "So, what was with your little disappearin' act this mornin'? Not even a 'goodbye' or a 'thanks' or nothin'?"

"Nope," Dally muttered, flicking the ash from the end of his cigarette.

"Well, fuck you then. I shoulda known better. _God forbid _Dally Winston sticks around for anything when he can run away from it like a scared little kid," Tim snapped, his irritated expression deepening into something far colder and harder to read. "Is that what you do?" he demanded harshly. "Run off whenever you can't deal with what's goin' on? Huh? Tell me, is it?"

Dally dropped his Kool to the ground and, not breaking eye contact with Tim, ground it out with the toe of his sneaker. Then, slowly, he stepped forward, away from the wall that he had been leaning against, and kept on walking until he was less than a foot away from the other boy.

"You listen, and you listen good, Shepard," he began coldly, hard blue eyes like chips of ice as he spoke. "I ain't some goddamn broad you can walk all over and I sure as hell ain't a fucking sissy, either. I ain't a girl, so you. Don't. Treat. Me. Like. One," he spat out, glaring ferociously, teeth bared in something very animalistic that closely resembled a snarl. He reached out and gave Tim a shove, not hard enough to make him take a step back but plenty hard enough to make his point.

"Don't you worry, I won't," Tim said, his voice just as icy as Dally's. "Not unless you keep on actin' like one, anyways."

"I'm just as much of a man as you are," Dally continued angrily, as if he hadn't even heard the other boy's reply, "Hell, I'm _more _of a man than you are."

Tim clenched his jaw angrily, biting back a vicious retort. Arguing with Dallas Winston was like trying to set up a ladder and climb to the moon—you could try all you wanted, but it was never going to work. It was better just to let him think he'd won the argument, whether or not he actually _had _was beside the point. Dally was as bull-headed as they came; trying to get him to see someone else's side of things was damn near impossible. Tim was good, _damn_ good, but he was no miracle worker.

Instead, he met the shorter boy's gaze, surprised but not overly so by the stubborn fire he could see burning there, and gave a jerky, reluctant nod.

It wasn't much, but it was the best Dally was going to get. Arguing with Dally was pretty much useless, but that didn't mean he was going to swallow his pride and let Dally have everything his way.

"I know you ain't a girl, Winston," Tim ground out, taking a slow step closer so that Dally was forced to crane his head back to keep eye contact with him.

His tone took on a slightly joking quality as he added, much less seriously, "You'd be missin' some real important parts if you were." He held up his hands and gestured at the tow-headed boy's distinctly flat chest, making a crude motion like he was cupping a pair of breasts.

Dally smirked, more because of the ridiculous-looking gestures Tim was making than because of what he'd said. "Nah, I'd just look more like you."

Tim immediately ceased his air-groping and scowled at the shorter boy. "Dally, hate to break it to ya, but I'm older _and_ taller than you. I'm the guy here." He couldn't help it; he knew it was just feeding the beast, but he couldn't bring himself to keep his mouth shut. Dally was in for one hell of a surprise if he thought Tim was going to be the chick.

Shaking his head, Dally gnashed his teeth and took that one last step closer to Tim, so that he was pressed up against the black-haired boy from chest to mid-thigh. He slid his arms around Tim, and then, quick as lightning, moved one of them to reach up and grab hold of Tim's curly black hair. Smirking viciously, Dally yanked the other boy's head down none-too-gently and smashed their lips together, rough and fast, almost desperate in his haste.

He forced Tim's mouth open--not that Tim was fighting it or anything, he was getting just as much enjoyment out of it as Dally was--and shoved his tongue inside, exploring every corner and crevice before biting down—_hard_—on the older boy's lower lip. The coppery tang of blood hit his tongue, and he pulled back sharply. Tim, panting for air, looked down at him with a hungry expression on his face.

Smirking, Dally released Tim's hair, disentangling his fingers from the soft strands with a little difficulty, and took a step back, out of Tim's reach. "Who's the man now?" he sneered, then turned and walked away, deliberately not looking back.

Scraping together the last vestiges of his composure, Tim belatedly called out, "Still me!"

Dally didn't give any sign that he had heard him, though, and just kept walking, a definite swagger present in his step.

* * *

It was almost two days before Tim saw Dally again. The blond had spent most of that time at the Slash J, exercising the horses and irritating the stable hands and just generally making a nuisance (albeit an occasionally helpful nuisance) of himself. He usually stopped by at least a couple of times a week, to keep up his riding skills and (although he wouldn't admit it) to spent a little time with the horses.

There weren't many things Dallas Winston liked, aside from the obvious—smokes, booze, action, and, apparently, Tim—but horses were definitely one of them.

His favorite horse—in other words, the one he spent the most time babying—was a bay Quarter Horse stallion that went by the name of Shan. (His real name—the one the announcers used at races and rodeos—was Shanahan Dancer, but Dally never called him that. It was too long, and besides that, he liked the sound of 'Shan' better.)

Coincidentally, or maybe not so much in this case, Shan was also more than likely the most ill-tempered, ornery horse in the whole of Oklahoma.

He and Dally went together like fish and water, so it was really no surprise that it was Shan's stall the blond-haired Greaser was in when Tim stopped by in search of Buck Merril, who could often be found at the Slash J when he wasn't throwing a party or trying (usually unsuccessfully) to pick up a broad.

Stalking down the isle, his footsteps echoing loudly in the mostly quiet barn, Tim headed for the office at the far end. Glancing inside, he saw that it was empty and cussed under his breath, turning away to storm back out to his car.

"Goddamn it, Merril!" he growled, kicking at the door of the nearest stall.

"Christ, Tim, what's got your panties in a knot?" Dally snorted, appearing in the doorway of a stall across the isle. Tim jumped, startled. He hadn't realized there was anyone else there. He hoped Dally hadn't seen his reaction; the blond would pounce on that moment of weakness like a starving cat on a mouse if he even _suspected _that it had happened.

"Fuckin' Buck Merril," he answered irritably. "Been duckin' me for the last week. The bastard owes me money." He shot Dally a dark look and added, "Money he probably gave to _you_."

"Me?" Dally asked innocently. That right there was a dead giveaway. Tim had known him for years, and the only time he had ever heard that particular tone was when Dally was trying to lie to someone. Dally just didn't _do_ innocent, not unless he was trying to get away with something, and anybody that had talked to him for more than half a second—or hell, even really looked at him for more than half a second—would know that. "No clue what you're talkin' about, Shepard."

Something big and brown appeared over Dally's shoulder, crowding into the doorway behind him. It turned out to be Shan, butting the blond hood on the shoulder with his nose, demanding attention with all the imperiousness of a spoiled child that has never heard the word "no" before.

Fighting back a smile—for some weird reason, Shan's antics always made him grin; maybe it was kind of like how parents always thought their kids were the most adorable things ever even when they were making a mess and crying up a storm and getting their grubby little paws into _everything_—he reached up and stroked the horse's neck.

Tim watched the motion in surprise—he'd had no idea that Dally liked horses. Sure, he knew he rode them and stuff, but not that he actually cared enough to spend time with them and pet them and shit. Hell, from the looks of things Dally was fonder of the goddamn horses than he was of Sylvia! He certainly seemed to enjoy spending time with them more, judging by the small but genuine smile that had crept onto the blond's face despite his attempts to disguise it as a scowl.

"Look, just, y'know, tell him I'm lookin' for him if ya see him, OK?" Tim sighed, pushing all thoughts of Dally and fondness to the back of his mind. He could think about that later, when he was in the privacy of his own home. Preferably in his room with the door locked.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll let him know," Dally muttered, rolling his eyes. He slid his hand up to rub behind Shan's ears, and was rewarded with a snort and some seemingly random ear twitching from the dark brown stallion.

Tim's eyes followed the motion of Dally's hand, now absently rubbing behind Shan's left ear, and he wasn't surprised to see that Dally's knuckles were scraped up and swollen-looking. He was used to seeing them like that--Dally got in way too many fights, and his hands were always pretty busted-up looking afterwards. It was the first time Tim had ever really noticed how Dally seemed to have no concept of the pain caused by his injuries, though. He wasn't being careful at all about bending his fingers, and he didn't even flinch when he dipped his hand down to scratch under Shan's chin, despite the pain the motion had to have caused him.

Frowning, Tim shook his head. What the hell? Since when did he give a fuck whether or not Dally was in pain, or notice how he handled it? God, he really _was_ going soft. He never used to give so much as a second thought to things like that, about _anybody_, except maybe his family, and now here he was contemplating Dallas Winston's knuckles. Pathetic.

Tim cleared his throat and said, "Alright then," awkwardly, half a beat too late because of his impromptu inspection of Dally's hands.

"...yeah," Dally answered after a pause, flushing a little when he realized how awkward and lame he'd just sounded. He couldn't think of anything else to say, though, so he kept his mouth shut. Tim stood there for a moment longer before turning abruptly and heading back out to his car, completely skipping the whole "goodbye" part of the conversation.

Dally watched Tim walk away, feeling--for some inexplicable reason--like there was a humongous butterfly crashing around in his stomach.

The sound of Tim's car roaring to life reached his ears, announcing the older boy's departure, and he turned his attention back to Shan, who was making it abundantly clear that he hadn't liked having to share Dally's attention for even a few minutes. The bay stallion tossed his head impatiently, the look in his dark eyes reproachful.

Dally shook his head. "What're _you_ all worked up about, ya spoiled brat?" he muttered, stroking the horse's silky neck. Shan just snorted loudly and pawed at the ground with his hoof.

Cracking a grin—a real one, not the bitter-parody-of-a-smile kind or the wolfish one he used when he was trying to pick up a broad—Dally gave the fiery stallion's neck one last pat and left the stall to go get his tack. The weather was perfect for going riding.

* * *

Two hours later, Dally shouldered the Curtis's screen door open and strutted inside, letting it slam shut behind him. Steve and Soda looked over at him from the couch, where they were watching TV and, judging by the smears of chocolate ringing both of their mouths, eating cake.

"Hey," Dally said by way of greeting, "Either of you guys up for catchin' a movie or somethin' later?"

Soda and Steve both answered at the same time.

"Sure thing, Dally."

"Alright."

The two younger Greasers looked at each other and grinned, reaching out to twine their fingers together on top of the couch cushion between them.

Dally made a face. "Jesus Christ you two're sappy. Lemme know when you're done givin' each other puppy eyes and shit, OK?"

Averting his eyes from the lovey-dovey display in front of him, he stalked into the kitchen and went to get a beer. He wasn't really all that thirsty, but it was an excuse to leave the room. (Not that Dally _needed_ an excuse to do whatever the hell he wanted…) He didn't want to watch Soda and Steve act like lovesick girls around each other—on top of the fact that it kind of weirded him out, for some strange, stupid, infuriating reason it made him think of Tim.

More accurately, it made him think of how he and Tim had acted like a couple of blushing virgins around each other only a couple of hours previously, blushing and smiling dopily and just generally making total idiots out of themselves.

It was unacceptable—Dallas Winston was smooth, charming, _cool_. He didn't blush and he didn't feel awkward and he sure as hell didn't get _tongue-tied_. Yet, that was exactly what had happened.

Shaking his head in disgust—if anybody got wind of the way he'd been acting lately, and especially the reason _why_ he'd been acting like such a pussy the last few days, his rep would be totally and completely shot to hell—he grabbed a beer can out of the fridge and popped the tab on it.

He took a long swig, welcoming the slight burn as the alcohol made its way through his mouth and down his throat, but wincing slightly when it made contact with a small cut on the inside of his cheek. He'd gotten in a fight earlier that morning on his way down to Buck's place, where he'd been planning on hijacking his car for the day. He'd whaled on the other guy something fierce, taking out all of his frustration over the whole Tim situation on him. The guy had gotten a couple of swings in edgewise, though, hence the small gash on the inside of his right cheek from where it had "gotten caught" between his teeth and the other guy's fist. (Unfortunately, he'd learned later on that trying to hold the reins right with swollen, bruised-up knuckles was pretty damn hard. It hadn't stopped him from taking Shan out for a run, though—since when had pain ever stopped Dallas Winston from doing _anything_?)

Leaving the beer can on the kitchen table, he cut himself a piece of chocolate cake—it looked like Soda and Steve had really gone to town on it; the plate it was on was already almost empty—and ate it leaning against the counter, dropping cake crumbs all over the place.

Thankfully Darry wasn't around to bitch at him about making a mess. (Darry was about the only person, except for Tim of course, that had the guts to ream him out if he did something to piss him off.)

He was just finishing it off when Pony came wandering into the kitchen, empty cup in hand, and headed over to the fridge. "Hey kid," he said.

"Hi Dally," Pony mumbled back. It was obvious he wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to the conversation; he was too busy digging around in the fridge and muttering things to himself under his breath.

Deciding that trying to have any kind of interesting conversation with Pony at the moment was kind of a wasted effort, Dally dumped his plate and fork in the sink—somebody would end up washing them later, he really didn't care who as long as it wasn't him—and reluctantly went back into the living room, hoping fervently that he wouldn't be walking in on anything he'd rather not be witness to.

Thankfully, it looked like Steve and Soda had finished up with their sickeningly sweet display of affection and were slouched on the couch watching the Perry Mason show. He eyed them both from the doorway for a minute, waiting to see if anything was going to happen that could possibly trigger his gag reflex (or any less-than-innocent thoughts about Tim, he was trying to avoid both scenarios) before deeming it safe to go sit by them.

The two lovebirds were hogging up the whole couch, so he flopped down on the floor and stretched out on his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows so he could watch TV without getting a massive crick in his neck.

"So Dal, whatta ya been up to?" Steve asked, faux-casually.

"Whatta you care?"

"What? A guy can't even ask a goddamn question anymore?"

Dally rolled his eyes at Steve. "Shut your trap, Randle." He added grudgingly after a long pause, "Headed down at the Slash J, worked the horses a little bit. I ain't been down there as much 's I shoulda been lately."

Steve raised an eyebrow at him. "Shoot, since when d'you care what ya _should_ be doin'?" he asked, shaking his head in disbelief. "And here I thought you went around _tryin'_ to break rules."

"Rules are for sissies and broads," Dally sneered in response. "You a sissy, Steve?"

Steve just rolled his eyes, used to Dally's standoffish attitude. "Don't even go there, Dally. I'm about as much of a sissy as you are." He smirked.

Dally bristled, narrowing his eyes dangerously. Steve was his buddy, sure, but that sure as hell didn't give him any right to go around calling him a sissy. 'Nobody calls Dallas Winston a sissy,' he thought to himself furiously.

Of course, his second thought, right on the heels of the first, was that, impossibly, Steve had somehow figured out his feelings for Tim, and for a second he was paralyzed by worry. There was no way he could've, though… was there?

'_Stop worryin' over it like some upset broad, there's no way he knows anything.' _Still mentally berating himself for being an idiot, he shot Steve a squinty-eyed glare and rolled over onto his back. "If I wasn't too lazy to get up right now, I'd belt ya one for that," he growled. "I ain't no fucking sissy."

"Yeah, well I ain't one either, so don't be callin' me one," Steve shot back crossly. His tone was hard, but there was an anxious look in his eyes—as tough as he was, he knew that Dally was tougher, and if they really got into it Dallas could probably kick his ass, injured or not.

"Hey, would you two mind shuttin' your traps? I can't hear what he's sayin' with all this racket," Soda cut in before Dally could snarl out a reply. He pointed (rather unnecessarily) at the TV. "An' I wanna know how it ends."

Steve rolled his eyes but slouched a little and turned his attention back to the TV screen. Dally grunted irritably, twisting his neck at a funny angle in an attempt to watch too without going through the extra effort of rolling back over onto his stomach again. All that did was give him a crick in his neck (and rub his still not-fully-healed head wounds against the carpeting, which was definitely a less than pleasant sensation) though, and he gave up after a couple of minutes.

* * *

He must have drifted off to sleep or something, because the next thing he knew, he was being nudged awake. Groaning, he pushed himself upright and slid backwards to lean against the couch.

Somewhere behind him, Two-Bit laughed. "Golly, he looks like a little kid, don't he Soda?"

Dally whipped around to glare at the amused redhead, but his sleep-puffy eyes and wild, all-over-the-place hair didn't do much to help him in the intimidation department. Not that that really worked on Two-Bit, anyway; out of everyone in the Curtis gang, he was about the only person (besides Darry) who could stare Dallas in the eye without any outward signs of nervousness. Even Steve, who made it a point to mouth off to people, was a little mellower when it came to arguing things with Dally. Everybody in the gang went out of their way to keep from pissing Dally off—when he got mad, things turned ugly. Mouthing off to Dally would be just like trying to pick a fight with Darry; just plain stupid and it pretty much guaranteed a busted limb or two.

His glare turned into a grimace, though, as soon as he tried to move. His thighs, not used to riding for such long periods of time (he'd been slacking off lately and hadn't been down at the stables as much as he should've been) twinged with pain as he sat up. Grabbing the arm of the couch, he used it to haul himself to his feet. Muttering a few choice words—the majority of which were frowned upon in polite company—Dally hobbled around behind the couch and headed towards the stairs, intent on answering the call of nature.

He'd just finished up and was rinsing his hands off when footsteps sounded on the stairs and Darry came walking in, sweaty and tired with streaks of grime all over his clothes, arms, and face.

"Oh, hey there Dally," Darry said, nodding.

Dally nodded back, murmuring a quick, "Have fun at work?" in reply.

Darry grimaced, holding up his grime-and-sweat-coated arms for Dally to see. "Oh yeah," he said sarcastically. "Tons."

Dally chuffed a laugh. "Yeah, I figured. How in God's name do you get so filthy, though, bein' a _carpenter_? I mean, it's just wood and shit, ain't it?"

"You'd be surprised," Darry began, turning on the water and sticking his hands under the warm spray.

He didn't get to finish, though; just then Soda came wandering into the bathroom, frowning to himself. "Have either of you guys seen my comb 'round here anywhere?" he asked, picking up a pair of jeans that were lying on the floor by the hamper and checking the pockets. "I can't find it."

"Nope," Dally said, just as Darry answered, "Haven't seen it."

Soda left without another word to them, mumbling to himself, "Where in the blazes could it be?"

A few seconds later footsteps sounded outside the door and Two-Bit poked his head in. "I ain't missing out on any top-secret important discussions in here, am I?"

Darry laughed. "Nope. You just missed Soda, though. He lost his comb." He shook his head in exasperation. "I swear, if that boy's head weren't attached he'd probably lose it."

Two-Bit grinned. "Oh, you mean _this_ comb?" He held up a slim black hair comb, dangling it between his thumb and pointer finger.

"Lord, Two-Bit. You makin' it a point to make off with everything that's not nailed down?" Darry snorted.

"Of course not!" the rusty-haired Greaser exclaimed, looking affronted. "You still got all your dishes and silverware, don't ya?" He grinned, leaning up against the door frame. "I ain't tried to walk off with those yet."

"Yet," Dally shot back pointedly, rolling his eyes. "And that's only 'cuz you wouldn't be able to eat here anymore if they didn't have nothin' to cook with."

Two-Bit cocked an eyebrow at him. "True," he conceded.

"Alright, you two. Outta here. I gotta wash up," Darry cut in. "Unless you wanna sit at the table with me smellin' like this."

Both Two-Bit and Dally grimaced and left the room quickly. The quicker Darry got showered, the better.

* * *

A/N: Again, I'm sorry for the extremely (!!) long wait. Chapter 9 is partially underway--I've got about 1500 words for it so far--so it should be out fairly soon. I'm not going to promise a particular day (or month...) though, since I'm apparently pretty bad at keeping my word. :P

Thanks for sticking with this, despite the horribly irritating author and once-a-century updates.


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